Exploring Aftermarket Business Value with Jonathan Weiner
In this episode of the Aftermarket Champions Podcast, host Vivek Joshi interviews Jonathan Weiner, former CEO of Hayward Gordon. John shares his background in corporate America and his time working in Asia, highlighting the importance of long-term relationships and customer satisfaction. He discusses the challenges of selling capital equipment and the opportunities in the aftermarket, explaining how Hayward Gordon implemented a separate sales organization for aftermarket sales and focused on building customer relationships. Throughout the conversation, Jonathan emphasizes the importance of change management and continuous investment in employee skills to thrive in the aftermarket industry. He further explains the pivotal role these elements play in sustaining growth and innovation. The episode concludes with a discussion on the role of private equity in the aftermarket industry. John discusses the importance of building relationships internally and externally, the value of aftermarket business, and the lessons he has learned throughout his career. Jonathan emphasizes the need for change management when implementing new strategies and the importance of listening and understanding the needs of others, highlighting the role of luck and opportunity in his success. Join us as we explore John Weiner's insights into the aftermarket industry, gaining valuable lessons and strategies for success in this dynamic field.
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[MUSIC]
Okay, good morning everybody and welcome to yet another edition of the After
market Champions
Podcast. This is Vivek Joshi, your host and the CEO and founder of Entitled, a
software
service company that serves original improvement manufacturers. My guest today
is John Wiener,
former CEO, Heyward Gordon, one of our customers, and now John is a personal
friend of mine.
He too lives here in Austin like me and I thought it would be great to have him
come and join us as a
guest to tell us a little bit about his story, about his experiences leading up
to Heyward Gordon,
but more importantly, the role of Aftermarket in the context of Heyward Gordon
and his career
because he's had quite an illustrious career to this day. So with that, welcome
John, welcome to
the show. Thanks for joining us today. Good morning Vivek, good to see you as
well.
So John, I always like to start this show with asking people to tell a little
bit about themselves,
a little bit about John. So maybe maybe your history all the way from Brooklyn
onwards,
or you know, you choose where you want to start, right? Well, just celebrated
my 60th birthday
last month, so they can get an idea. Welcome. Yeah, thank you very much. I went
to
University of Denver, graduated in the mid mid 80s. And then eventually went
final education at the
Harvard Business School Advanced Management Program, which was a great way to
kind of cap off my
education, spent 26 years in corporate America, a company called Paul
Corporation,
also world leader of filtration industrial filtration and life sciences. I was
on the industrial side.
And for 26 years, worked with some of the best and brightest people I've ever
met. I'm very
fortunate to have that career. And during that time, I spent a total of 12
years living and working in
Asia. First in the early 90s, then in the from 2004 through 2011, lived in
Singapore, lived in
Japan and was able to eventually I ran the industrial businesses throughout
Asia. That's 13 countries
and about $500 million of sales. After 26 years, I think was time for something
new,
and wound up working with their capital, Chicago, running one of their and
eventually two of their
portfolio companies, somebody called Keesan. And I have a member in filtration
and consumables in
that respect to capital equipment, which was a small part of Paul's business.
We definitely had
the approach we sold equipment to sell filters. And so it's definitely the idea
was to get as
many filters as you could sell. It's interesting when you get to Keesan, they
're a capital equipment,
they really didn't focus on aftermarket at all, because it's rotary equipment
and it's just about
selling hundreds of thousands of dollars. Each piece of equipment being, you
know,
100 spends a year. I ran that for four years that was sold, moved to element
partners,
where I ran a group of companies called the Hayward Gordon group. That's
Hayward Gordon
pumps and mixers, shark mixer and Scott Turban. And there again, capital
equipment, but there's a
great portion of aftermarket that unfortunately was not being not being mined
correctly. And we
just sold that a year ago to Ebaro Corporation, the world's largest pump
company. Great exit.
Everyone was very happy and I've just entered retirement, but still keeping my
hand in the private
equity world. Yes. And I think that's been a fantastic story for you. Just
listening to this
26 years at Paul, but also those 12 years in the Asian market. I mean, 13
countries,
so lots of frequent fire miles. But I think the point is that in those 12 years
, you probably saw
lots of similarities and differences in the way those markets treat capital
equipment in the
post-seiz environment in your case filters versus maybe the US and the European
markets.
Is there something there that was unique in terms of Asia versus the US that
you took away?
Yeah. Well, you know, Paul Corporation is not really a capital equipment
company,
so it is a consumer business. So I grew up thinking, you know, it's about long,
you know,
relationships, but Americans and New Yorkers are very transactional and are
very kind of
go on to the next item. In Asia, when I got to Japan, I was 26 years old. You
know, I knew everything.
So I thought, and you know, the Japanese, it's a completely different world. It
's long-term
relationships. The customers came. You do everything you can do to make that
customer happy. And so
the Japanese really taught me about that stickiness with relationships, about
going the extra mile,
and then maybe even a little bit beyond that. You know, customer complaints
were taken with the
utmost seriousness of the customers down the, you know, their business stops,
our world stops.
I think that's true of a lot of Asia. So Japan certainly exemplifies it, but
through India and
Singapore, Korea and those countries, quality is key, making the customer happy
, and establishing
those really long-term decisions. The other thing was lucky is that Nepal was a
very big company,
12,000 employees. Asia had about 1800 with the factories, but there were 13
countries.
So when you looked at it outside of Japan, there were really small businesses.
You had to be quick,
you had to be nimble, you weren't dealing with matrix organizations like you
would at the mother
ship in New York. And so I was able to work in a big organization, but have the
feel of running
a small company. But there's something interesting to say in addition to the
small company bit at
the end, you talked about the relationships, the continuity, the stickiness,
and the ability to kind
of be making sure you're always taking the customer's outcome as a first thing.
Now,
when you translate that, you experience not just a case on the drill, if they
would go
in companies, how do that manifest itself and how you started making changes,
what kinds of
things you started doing? Because that to me is really a secret sauce. I think
a lot of companies
forget that the ability to try to get the long-term relationships.
Well, you know, capital equipment, if you're selling pumps, let's say, and you
get a million
dollars worth of pumps for municipality, when are they going to come back and
be your customer
again? 10 years? 20? The pumps last certainly that long. So unless there's an
expansion or
something tragic happens, they are not your customers. So your salespeople are
looking to
move on to the next big elephant to kill. But the aftermarket is the best
opportunity. So you need
to kind of start figuring out how do you stay with a customer. One is obviously
making sure your
quality is better than anyone else, because you don't want to spend your time
fixing problems that
you didn't have to create in the first place. But beside that, what we really
learned, I think,
at Hayward Gordon, is you can ask salespeople to be what they're not, which is
aftermarket salespeople.
Elephant hunters need to hunt elephants, and farmers need to farm. And so we
decided let's
create a separate sales organization outside of the capital guys and hand off
the business. In fact,
I'd say it even started before the sale. We looked at our quote system and said
, "Why aren't we
quoting the aftermarket parts?" A set of them with the initial right. And he
said, "Well, why do I
need it parts?" And we'd explain to the customer, "It's good to have them a key
. Something happens.
Maybe you break something." And we would give them a package deals. But we
wanted to get our part
number in their system. And someone in purchasing a year from now says, "A seal
for Hayward Gordon."
Boom, they got the part number. So it started there. Then once you got the
order,
the day of really installation, one of the checklist is an introduction to the
customer
to the aftermarket team, whoever's gotten that customer. So you had to make
that connection,
right? I'm leaving. Thank you for your sale. Here's Dave. He's going to take
care of the aftermarket.
And we would actually have scheduled 30-day, 90, six-month, and one-year follow
-ups. Fascinating.
Right. So this way, you got an email and a call just following up. How's
everything going?
Well, the customer will tell you. If not, you want to know that. And if it's
great, you want to know
that too. And there was an opportunity for, have you serviced it? You know
there's a certain amount
of lubrication that needs to go on and do you need a seal? How is it? We also
tried to sell monitoring. And that was some success. I think it's going to get
better now with
the Internet of Things. But the idea is, "Hey, why don't I monitor your
equipment? I'll tell you
when you need something." And that's the future. And the last part is looking
back at the,
Hayward Gordon was a 70-year-old company. Sharpen, Scott Turban were 50-year
companies.
The next question was, how did we go after that treasure trove, that mine of
gold, which is
an established base of customer. It's been about 20, 30 years. It does need
after market,
regular service. How do I get that? Because if I'm not selling it to you and I
sold you the
print five years ago, 10 years ago, 20 years. Somebody else is there. Somebody
's eating my lunch.
So we really kind of had to look at the whole process from new equipment and
creating that
opportunity that goes forward. How do we create new opportunities like with
monitoring and then,
truth be the biggest opportunity, is that mine of 30 to 40-year-old equipment.
And how do I get
that going forward? So it's a multifaceted approach. And one which I think that
the entitle really helped us unlock. I appreciate that last part. But I think we go
back to something
you said, which is interesting. So at the point of sale, once the sale and
installation is done,
your capital equipment sales person handle, your aftermarket manager or team
leader who
could be saying, "My job is done. You got to pump up and running." By the way,
here's John
Wiener who's now going to take care of you over the next few months, years,
whatever it might be.
That's an interesting handoff. I've not seen too many people put that into
practice
on that kind of handoff basis. Is that something you took from Paul or is that
something you
got developed in your home or was that an existing practice? Because that's
actually
really good practice in my mind. Yeah, I think I got in truthfully. Paul was
more always less
capital, so it was more. I think the idea originally, I probably wasn't even
from me. I have to tell
you, I've had some great people who worked for me and who I've worked for. So I
'll take credit for
this conversation, but likely I'm mine. But we talked about how car dealerships
do it. When you
sell a car, when you buy a car, and the salesman's with you the whole time, he
has a green up price,
and he walks you over for the paperwork, and then they're going to sell you, of
course,
the undercoating and all the horrible one argue. But he's walked away because
they want him back
in the front of the showroom for the next customer to walk in. And for the next
, actually, for the
life of your car, it'll be that service guy. And it's a very effective way
because you don't want
the guy who's selling you the car trying to sell you on a tire replacement. So
I did this great
practice. It was a really good practice. I've seen it done from some other
companies, and it really
is a best in class process. So not invented by me, but certainly stolen
shamelessly by me.
Yeah. There's something else you said in the Japan experience,
talking with relationships and continuity and stuff. So it's one thing to hand
off to John Doe,
who's now your aftermarket manager. The question is, how do you go about making
sure that
organizationally and institutionally is John Doe and Jane Smith and whoever
else follows
this customer or set of customers have a certain cadence or rhythm to go. You
talk about emails
and phone calls every 30, 60, 90 days, whatever it could be. But just going
beyond that,
embedding the mindset of the company is also important. How do you go about
doing that
in a company as old? And honestly, with age or tenure from this practice, is
that I embedded in
your brain, right? That changed heart. One of it is we really bifurcated the
two things
very clearly within the company. So you've had a sales manager for capital
equipment,
and we had a sales manager for aftermarket. And first of all, as I told you,
the aftermarket is
de-graviates the high margin. So capital equipment, 25% margins, might be
really good.
Aftermarket, $15.75 is really good. So every dollar I saw in aftermarket were
three times,
in some cases, with the capital. It needs to be elevated to the same status as
the capital equipment.
And in fact, you're trying to get to at least 25 or 30% of your total revenue
to be aftermarket.
When you get 30% of your revenue, that means it's almost equal in profit to
your capital.
So there really should be equally weighted. The sales team, of course, always
has sales commissions.
So does the aftermarket team. So incentivizing these people for those sales is
very important.
And yes, you can automate emails. You can automate. We did promotions. So that
first sale is the
most important. Getting the SKU number in their system is so important. So we
don't just do a
package of say, aftermarket parts. We had everything enumerated. So we get each
of those into the
system. And then people were incentivized, paid for quarterly for the after
market sales.
So a bit of a pros and cons.
So doing it, I think, is important to show the seriousness of the company.
Yeah. And I like this part number idea because that's also Trojan horse.
Right. The moment you're in the system, you're on AVL. It automatically just
becomes like,
just plays a PO. You have the partner, my system anyway.
Now, case on corporate, on that point, one of the biggest consumables in case
on is
vibratory screeners have screens. Big round screen, some 102 inch diameter
could cost,
you know, $20,000, but smaller ones are five, 600 bucks. They break, they have
to be replaced
and have to different sizes for different jobs. And they didn't have a
partnering system for
the screens because there's a lot of variables, the size, the mesh, the gasket,
does have a center
plate material, whatever. And the answer is, of course, you can create a
partner.
Right. Now, not that hard to do when we did. And the shame was customers could
never order a
part number. Right. Right. And so you made it difficult for the customer to
order.
And that's the last thing you want to be is the hindrance, not the help to the
customer.
Right. You know, what's this couple of things I want to pick up on, the one is
you talked about
this partner, my idea, which is great. But something that you just referred to
has been stuck in my
mind for a while, which is, as you make these things happen, there's a series
of changes that
happen, right? So you can, you had to convince the case on people who said,
look, let's create
partners wherever you want to these measures. Or you create this practice about
having everything
to have a leader correctly to kind of have the partners put them in system. But
that begs a
bigger question, John, about change management, right? Again, I don't know how
all case on was as an entity, but my guess is more than 40, 50 years old, they
would go in 70 years
old. How much change management did you have to undertake to kind of make this
thing work for
you? Right. Because it's not simple. And that's where I see the biggest failure
mode, if you
made most of these companies today. Sure. And depending on the size of the
company, the first
mistake I think people make, Paul Corporation, by the way, was a wonderful
place to practice
change management. It was highly innovative. It's owned now by Dan or her,
which is, you know,
Dan or her business systems. I mean, there's a process. I think Paul was very
similar in that,
you know, we had really kind of figured out how we do things and change is
necessary for every
business. The first thing though with small companies is you can come up with a
thousand
great ideas. But if there's only 10 people to do it, you're not doing a
thousand ideas.
You really have to pick your battles. So don't do more than you can do. In the
first few,
we used to do product champions. We used to do, we would make it very special.
If you were on a team,
we elevate that in the eyes of the employees. So you almost wanted to, hey, can
I get on an
initiative? There were different initiatives. We would name them. We had a team
at Heyward Gordon,
we had the Midas team, we had the Merigold team. And they had very specific
goals. You were chosen
to be part of it. We did special things, dinners and so on. There were weekly
and monthly report
outs. And so if you're a lower level person on this team, you felt kind of
special. We did,
when we finished projects, we gave prizes. We gave gifts. We everyone had pens
and t-shirts that had
team Merigold and this and that. So you really create an excitement around the
initiative.
But it has to be a very clear start and finish. You have to set the goals. You
have to manage it.
And you make these people feel as if they're really it matters that they're
changing.
It's a big deal to make people feel special. It's a big deal to get them
motivated through
these things right. And I think that's an important aspect. Now, one question
for you regarding that
and it goes back to what you said a little while ago, which is it's one thing
to have a
poll with 12,000 people in case someone with whatever the size was and coming
to Heyward
Gordon where maybe you don't have the size of employees that population if you
may. And therefore
finding even the 10 people to do it is always harder to these smaller companies
. Right.
Do you have to go back and maybe re-skill certain things or maybe bring in
people from the outside?
How do you kind of make some of these things stick there? Yeah, I mean,
cool if you don't have the skill set in house, you've got to go out and get it.
There are people though that are really interested in learning new skills and
getting upgraded. So
project management, for example, on one gentleman who was naturally good at it,
but he was totally
unskilled. And also we didn't have the right software. So there's sent them on
for a couple
of months. I think it was a four week course. Came back as energized as you
could find someone.
So investing in your people is a great step. A lot of the young people want to
learn new stuff.
But there are also, you'd be surprised, the guy, the 25 year veteran, the
company who's just on it
and you kind of look at him and he gets up, does the same thing. He might be
looking for a challenge
too. So I think you got to keep the door open for everybody. A couple of
questions. I want to
rewind that to your early day, not early days, but when he came to Howard
Gordon. A couple of
questions for you. What is, how did you wind up in the Howard Gordon job? Was
it because he did
have a relationship with element partners or were you selected to kind of
recruit from the
outside coming in? Yeah, it was recruiter. It was one of the large recruiters.
It was
hydrogen struggles and they came in. I always, I'll tell you, my fortunate has
been that I like
long term relationships. I make friends and Vivek. You obviously is one of
those.
Making sure you make an effort to keep friendships and business or personal
life, I think are an
important sign of happiness. And with hydrogen struggles, they had come to me
several times
with possible job opportunities. And I said, not interested, but I know
somebody who would be
great for it. And on two occasions, colleagues of mine were fortunate to have I
threw their name
into the ring and they got the job. They're certainly thankful. But you know,
who has also
the hydric struggles of the world are thanks for their job is trying to find
good candidates. And
if I can hand them one, so you start reading this back and forth until
something really juicy came
up. And for me, love private equity. It's the best. It's the after doing both
sides. Let me tell you,
thank you corporate America. I have nothing to do with you. Private equity to
me is the place to
be. And we can discuss the reasons why. And so I jump at those opportunities.
In fact,
I have a call later today on one of those opportunities. So, you know, it's
only because of old
contacts and friends. But it's actually interesting. Right. So, you know, and
this is, I'm going to go
one more different question. But what I keep picking up from you is actually
something that
is a underappreciated aspect of success, which is relationships and investing
them in an
invested network around you. To some degree, you know, I keep looking at you
and saying,
John's a bond sales guy because I know I've known you for many years and I
understand. But also,
if you go back to your experience in Japan, it's about creating and maintaining
the relationships
and cultivating them over time, not just transaction, like I said, you know, we
tend to be very
transactional versus building out a what's in it for you, what's in it for me
kind of process.
And I think people forget that. Now, I want to kind of segue a little bit back
to the private
equity and element partner's discussion. So, you know, my perspective on
private equity is
there as focused as an interest to your point is, and thank you for private
equity, they're very
focused. There were deal thesis. They kind of have a objective and plan in mind
. I'm going to execute
that. Was that one of the motivations why they brought you in because of the
experiences you had
on the one-out-of-a-reza-reza-blade capital plus aftermarket mindset? Was there
a specific deal
thesis that Element had as part of the Herr Gordon investment? The answer is
yes, but I think they
liked a couple of things. One is, you know, private equity, nice thing is that
you walk in day one
with exit on your mind. So, there's an end goal. And I like that. I like having
really concrete
deliverables. And you need to instill that throughout the organization. You can
't just be like,
everyone understood where we were going. It's not a secret. But I had run big
companies that are
very good at process. Very good right now. You know, we talked about Paul, we
're down. We're
talking about Paul. There is a way of doing things that big companies have
figured out.
Translating that to a small used to be a mom-and-pop type of company. A lot of
these smaller companies
are just that. It's tough to do, but you need somebody who has the skill set,
as we just talked
about, of getting the old way to do the new, the change minute. You know, when
I put 13 countries
in Asia, or 13 very different countries, the best compliment I ever got was in
Japan, one of my
colleagues I had known for 20 years said to me, "John, I think in your past
life, you were Japanese."
Now, my good friend in Korea, years later said to me, "John, I think you used
to be Korean,
because you think I could be Korean." Then my good friend who ran Paul in India
said, "John,
I think he used to be India." I tend to look at most of these cultures, and
that could be a
country-related company, and not say, "Why are they doing this wrong?" But what
can I learn from
how they do right? And really absorb the good things. And once you do that, and
they get the
genuine feeling that you are listening and appreciating them, you can then
offer a suggestion.
But the ugly American, which I'm sure I think you would love as well,
of let me tell you how, let me tell you, is the probably the worst way to start
any covers.
That's right. Let me tell you what he should do.
Everyone's eyes roll in the back of their head.
So when you think about this journey at Hayward Gordon, you would have like
four or five years,
I think roughly plus or minus. I know, I mean, we don't need to know the data
because you
have talked about this in the past. But what is the transformation in terms of
the mix of
aftermarket and aftermarket really parts and consumables when you arrive versus
when you left
as a percentage of the total? Because I think it is a dramatically improved
performance,
if I remember correctly, right? Again, no numbers dated, but-
I think we were about 15 to 18% of aftermarket, most of that from a very small
pool. So you've
got to measure two things. One is percentage, perhaps. The other is, is it, you
're getting all
this money, but it's from one or two customers. A lot of it was from the mining
industry.
And I think the reason for that obviously is they're hyper focused on keeping
things moving.
There are remote locations. They buy lots of parts because if something goes
down,
and also it's custom equipment. So you've got this to call up eight different
suppliers.
The tough part is expanding that base and on some of the more consumable things
that are really
passed through items that you can buy and resell and still make two or three
times.
Right. Right. Because that's the right seals and gaskets.
Yeah. It's everything. And so we went from about 15 to 18 and we certainly were
over 30.
And that's- That's a big number. I'm creating that stickiness with the new
stuff, but that's
a very slow process. And if I sell like people's a piece of a capital equipment
, my first
aftermarket might be a year or two down the road. That's right. That's right.
If I want to get at
it today, it's about mining the old customers. So we took a very- We took the
approach,
anything that's between five and 10 years old, that hasn't bought anything from
us.
So this is data mining to mine. And that's where companies like yours really
helped us.
Let's come up with a thesis. If you haven't bought anything in the five to 10
year window,
and we know the equipment's still there because that's a very long time. And we
know there's parts,
somebody else is getting our lunch. That was our expression. I don't like that
feeling.
How do I get that back? And that is, okay, what parts can I go after? Who do we
know at those
sites? And if a salesman's in the area, can they drop by? Can we create some
type of a way of
doing it? Can we get the aftermarket team really going through the internet and
trying to find
using LinkedIn, using all these sales force we used, actually used not Sales
force, but
Dynamics. Yeah, we've done that. And how do we integrate all that to work? So
that's, I think that's the approach we did. But it moved the needle. And
remember,
25% margin versus 75% margin. An extra 10% from 15 to 25 to 30. The bottom line
And how much higher marks boost? Yeah, it's huge leverage.
Yeah. And so we saw a huge improvement on the company's overall revenue, profit
, and percentage
of profit compared to revenue. And that's due to that.
So interesting. You said when you entered, when you entered it with Gordon and
private
equity is clear, you have a focus on mind, which is an exit, you build a plan,
you build the
profile to the exit. So you also mentioned just now that you goose chop margins
, you goose chop
growth, you know, you obviously had a higher even down margin, if you may,
before and after.
How did that play into your final exit process, I guess?
Yeah. It's the multiples, you know, the multiples in industrial business can be
depends, you know, the hey days could be 10, 12, 15%. Yeah, it's not SaaS and
it's not
life sciences. There's no 25s and 30s. That's right. And in the worst side,
you have a very small customer concentration could really five or eight percent
, six percent.
And then when after, you know, COVID and as in, obviously, as interest rates
have gone up,
the ability for private equity leverage has gotten harder. So multiples have
come down. But
without talking specifically about, hey, we're Gordon, the multiples were
beyond where they had
hoped. And you know, most people want to have an IRR of 25%, they want to see a
two and a half to
three times exit. And we surpassed those numbers significantly. So that's a
healthy return for all
the investors and element partners couldn't have been better how they treated
the all the employees.
Yeah. And I'll shout out to Ibarra Corporation who had bought it. They have
been the best company
to sell to. And that's something we think about, you know, when you're selling
a company, yeah,
you want to get the highest number, but you don't want to sell your baby and we
think even the
private equity, the heartless private equity guys turns out they're like Grinch
. They have a heart
and they really want it was a great exit. So both from a personal, from an
economic standpoint,
but also from just the right people, the right people and the right people.
But you know, something interesting you said, so you you element to care the
employees,
but the business that you build a profile you changed from before and after
really helped
in terms of getting a better value for the company overall. Now, the question I
have and you and I
have talked about this is this a bit of a softball question is, even though it
's so obvious, John,
on the what the transformation does in terms of the value valuation and so on
and so forth,
why do more companies not follow that path of building up a strong aftermarket
post sales,
parts and service? What have you want to call it? Business versus just letting
things be, right?
It's a mystery to me and during this treatment. Well, of course, a lot of these
companies are
family owned. The capital equipment guys are typically the owners are
mechanical engineers.
They love their equipment. It's their babies, right? They help develop it. That
's what they want to
talk about. That's what they want to sell. And if they're making good money, is
growth really
that important? I want to invest my hard-earned winning in something that may
or may not pay off.
And so it's private equity eyes are really the what are the metrics we need to
go and we need
private equity companies or sharks. They need to keep swimming to live while we
need to keep growing.
So revenue needs to go up. Margins need to improve. Cost needs to improve as
well.
I've walked into family owned companies where we ask questions and they say, "
Oh, we don't track
that." Can you give us your revenue growth for the last few years? Yeah, most
people have that.
We see margins by product family. We don't have no idea what that means.
What would last to mean a price increase? Only when we have to, or are we?
Because pricing strategies are another thing. Do you realize you're selling
this for less money
than that, but that costs more? We never looked at that. We didn't look at our
croose.
I think it's a professionalism of a large, either large public company, which
are driven because
you have shareholders who are going to have a right now, or the private equity,
which says,
"We need to improve these things." So I think it's just not an they're not
educated in
those type of things. With that said, there's some privately owned family owned
businesses
are run wonderfully. So I don't want to paint with too broad a brush.
But I think that's an important opportunity for many companies to come in and
fundamentally
change the profile of the business to create more value both for the customers.
I think what's
forgotten in this process is, yes, the private equity investors made out well
as it employs.
But the aftermarket business, aftermarket processes and operation that you put
into place for the
continuity of touch points, relationships, the customer care really is actually
about
helping a customer operate better. So at some point, you had to realize that
this is about the
customer being better off as well in the bargain.
It really is that's a very true statement. I should have emphasized that more.
You know, not just doing it because you want to make more money. But if you
sell equipment and
you walk away, you're missing the opportunity to keep your customer happy. He
may be happy the
day he bought it. But what's the frustration if he doesn't know when to change
something out of
that fails five years later? Now, it's well passed a warranty. It's not your
fault because it didn't
maintain it correctly. But does he going to think about your pump or your mixer
Again, when he says, "Ah, it was great for the first five years, but then it
fell apart."
So if you really want to make customers, you want to talk about solution
selling.
And part of that solution is providing them with all the knowledge to have the
most effective
piece of equipment operating today, tomorrow. We had equipment out for 30 years
. Those customers
thought the world of our product. That's right. That's right.
Part of the reason it was working for 30 years is it was maintained correctly.
Maintained well, yeah.
And so after markets more than just, "Hey, how can I put some money in my
pocket day?"
It's about improving the overall value proposition of the total company.
And it's actually interesting, right? So, when I kind of wrap this thing up,
we're almost at 30-minute mark right now. If I were to ask you to maybe kind of
step back
for your 30-plus years and in this business, what are your lessons learned that
maybe the next
generation of people around us can take as part of this learning that says, "
Use the three or
four things that took away from my 30-user experience."
Yeah. Well, I mean, the first one I think was the lesson learned from Asia, of
course,
which is build those relationships internally to the company and externally.
Don't look at
things of, "What do I get from this if I give this?" Think of it more of, "How
can I help you?
What do you need from me? How can I help you on your journey to the customer or
to your employees?"
That conversational dynamic will eventually lead to things like, "Okay, now I
understand."
What you think the problems are may not be, but you've had that conversation
all of a sudden,
your paradigm starts to shift. So, with my mother used to say, "You've got one
mouth and two years.
Listen twice as much as you talk. I don't know if I've always followed that,
but I will tell you
it's good advice nonetheless." The second one I think is, I think it follows
that is,
"Don't ask people to do things that aren't naturally to them. You're not going
to create
them." I don't think you can take a really effective capital equipment sales
group
and make them also be effective aftermarket sales. It's not the DNA.
So, learn that that's not going to happen and create a structure where that
separate organization
that can happen. Making people do what you want simply because you want it is,
maybe it worked in the 40s and the 50s. I had a boss once. If anyone from my
old company,
Paul Carvish, knows this, they'll know who I'm talking about. He ripped the
phone out and threw
it out of a window. He was mad. You can't get away with that. You can't do that
What I find today is that CEOs and leaders in an organization, sales, whatever,
are less about telling people what to do. But making sure that collectively we
know what
needs to get done and then facilitating how to help them do that job. I've
tried making people
do what I want to do. From my family to my children, it just doesn't work. It's
much more that
cooperative and that's consultative type of approach. I think is the way you
get people to
succeed. That's amazing. I think this has been a fantastic thing. I always like
to end these
interviews or these discussions, John, with my favorite question. I have a big
podcast
listening. I love Guy Raz and his how I build his stories. You always ask the
end. I like to
ask the same. If you think back to your career and where you are today, how
much of it is luck
versus how much of it is because of your own brilliance and charm and good
looks, right?
Well, the first little charm and good looks, I think your listeners will
obviously understand
that that's not it. I would say luck is probably 75%. I was very fortunate to
have some wonderful
bosses. People who really taught me what it means to be a boss. That means not
throwing
phones out windows. What it really was about listening to me and understanding,
when they
would ask a question, so where do you want to be in five years? They weren't
just asking
this for a pet answer. They were like, "Okay, how do I help you get there?" I
had great mentors
along the way. I had great opportunities, but I also had an advantage of the
opportunity.
So the luck is getting an opportunity. This smart is taking it.
So opportunities to move to Japan or to move to Singapore or to run different
divisions.
I may not have been the first person they asked. I can't say that's true, but
you may
have someone who said, "No, I don't want to move to Japan. I'm crazy." I was
crazy enough to say,
"Yes, I want to move to Japan. I'll mount my wife there and raise my kids there
for many years."
And it was by far one of the best experiences in my life. Do things that make
you uncomfortable?
Try the things you don't know how to do. Understand that no one knows all the
answers to everything
them all the time, my goodness. And so it's okay not to be to know. It's okay
to ask for help.
And that's a question, yeah.
And typically what I used to tell people is, if I'm the smartest person in the
room,
I'm in the wrong room. I don't want to be in a meeting where I hire people and
I work with
people who know much more than I do. That's really the signs typically of good
management. So
75% luck, 25% smart enough to know that I'm lucky.
That's brilliant. That's a great answer. And I love that answer. And that's
actually really
consistent with many of the other people I've talked to, a very similar mindset
, which is,
there's a lot of things that happen that bring you to a certain place, but then
what you do with
it is something that's up to you. But in more cases than John said, the same
thing which you did,
which is they've been lucky to have been in certain jobs around certain people
in the early days,
which gave them a boost. And they made take advantage of this opportunity.
So that's a great way to end this conversation. John, I really, really
appreciate you taking the
time today. I know in retirement you're busy in the never. So I appreciate you
taking a few
minutes today to chat with us. Thank you very much. And I'm sure we'll get a
lot of feedback on this
when listeners take the time and listen to this in the next few weeks. So thank
you, John, and have
a great day. My pleasure. Thanks again. Great seeing you. Thank you.
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