#107: Staying Relevant In A Disruptive Marketplace with Garry Ridge

Welcome to The Conscious Pivot Podcast with international speaker, business mentor, bestselling author of Pivot, and your host, Adam Markel. The Conscious Pivot shares the stories and wisdom of people who have successfully reinvented some area of their business and personal life. You'll gain powerful insights into how you can fully embrace new opportunities, increase your performance, and master the art and science of innovation and resilience. So please join Adam as he guides you on your conscious pivot.

Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of the Conscious Pivot Podcast. I'm your host, Adam Markel, and I feel very blessed in this moment to be here. I'm actually standing. I've got one of these autonomous moving desks, and today I was inspired to stand during this podcast, which is really good. My back feels a lot better actually just being in this position. So I'll give full credit to the person who deserves that credit in just a moment, who's the guest on today's show. But in the moment, I just want to acknowledge how I'm feeling, and that is grateful and blessed to be here now, to be breathing, for it to be a sunny day. We've had a lot of rain in Southern California this winter, and the hills are literally alive with color, things that some people haven't seen in more than 10 years. These Beautiful orange poppies that are growing on the mountains outside our house. And just so much to be grateful for in this moment. Always a lot going on in the world, sometimes things that are saddening, sometimes things that bring our energy down or get our energy up in ways that are not necessarily healthy. And yet there's always more to be grateful for than there is to be complaining about. At least that's my personal experience of it. So I feel blessed in this moment to have a gentleman that is joining me that I've known for a little while now, so sort of almost a year, I guess, at this point, and got introduced to him and got to know him and even visit him at his workplace where he is operating an incredible company that you're going to hear about in just a moment. And just have an enormous respect for this gentleman. I think what he will bring today is not only a lot of life experience and really invaluable business experience and wisdom, and I look forward to that. I'm going to learn some things, and I know all of you will. My guest today is Gary Ridge, the President and Chief Executive Officer and Director, CEO, and board member of WD-40. He joined WD-40 in 1987 and held various leadership positions in the company before becoming the CEO in 1997. There is, I'll say as an aside, companies of this magnitude these days aren't around very long, or I should say they're around less and less. Their longevity has really decreased. I think the average age of a Fortune 500 company used to be about 60 years, and now more recently it's 18 years. So longevity is a big deal even in the most prolific of ongoing concerns of businesses. So it is no small feat that this company, WD-40, and we'll get to hear about its roots because it's been around a long time, is under great leadership and what it is that has helped it to stay relevant in a marketplace that is so disruptive and changing so rapidly. Gary Ridge is also an adjunct professor at the University of San Diego. where he teaches leadership development, talent management, and succession planning in the Master of Science in Executive Leadership program. He's passionate about learning and empowering organizational culture. He's helped establish that, in fact, at WD-40. And in 2009, he co-authored a book with Ken Blanchard outlining his executive leadership techniques titled Helping People Win at Work. And I love the subtitle, a business philosophy called Don't mark my paper, help me get an A. I just love that. He's a native of Australia. You'll hear that pretty quickly, I think. And he holds a certificate in modern relating and wholesale distribution and a Master of Science in executive leadership from the University of San Diego. So, wow, that's a mouthful. Gary, thank you so much for being on the show. Welcome. Hey, Adam, it's great to be with you today. Thank you. Yeah, it's a pleasure. That is a very significant bio and introduction. What is something that you would love for people to know about you that's not written in that bio, in that intro?

I'm consciously incompetent.

Yes, I believe that, and I also want to probe that. What do you mean by that, that you're consciously incompetent?

Well, the 3 most powerful words I, I've learned in my life are the 3 words of I don't know. And when I got comfortable with really the vulnerability around that, it's amazing how the world around me just opened. I read a book just recently that was a follow-on from Who Moved My Cheese called Out of the Maze by Spencer Johnson, who had passed away. And in that book, it talks about what are your beliefs, why do you believe things. And the question we need to ask ourselves a lot these days is why do we believe what we believe today. A fact is something we believe to be true. I think as a mindset, I love the mindset of, well, you know what? I'm consciously incompetent. I'm just this basic human being bumbling my way down the road of life, bumping into stuff. That opens up a wonderful pasture of learning. I love that Nelson Mandela said that education is the most powerful tool we have to change the world. Learning is the most powerful tool we have to change the world. So that's kind of what I mean by that.

Yeah. I mean, it's very different than being unconsciously incompetent, which when we have blind spots and where we think, as you say, those 3 dangerous words, I know that, when that's sort of the tape that's playing or the programming that is running us, we have many blind spots and we don't have the humility, I suppose, to recognize that we know as little as we actually do.

Yeah, it's true. And that's why at the company a long time ago we said we're going to take the word failure out of our vocabulary. We don't make mistakes at WD-40 Company. We have learning moments. And we emphasize that a learning moment is a positive or negative outcome of any situation that needs to be openly and freely shared to benefit all people. And by taking that fear away of failure, And opening these fields of learning, it's amazing the culture that it allows to build within the organization.

Resilience. It's the unsung hero in every success story that you will ever hear about. And in times of massive change and disruption, the kind of rapid change that we're all experiencing as leaders, as business owners, as entrepreneurs, we have to learn how to not only increase our own resilience but that of our teams. So right now we have a powerful opportunity for you to find out just how resilient you are. Some years ago, my team and I created the resilience assessment that more than 5,000 business leaders across the globe have taken. And all you have to do to get your own free resilience leader assessment is go to resiliencerank.com. It takes less than 3 minutes, and it's our gift to you for being the leader that you already are. Other Your free resources and tools will accompany your score instantly. So go to resiliencerank.com and find out just how resilient you are. It really is telling that failure or the desire to avoid failure is something that is ingrained and programmed like a computer program, something that we receive when we're very, very young from the time we're even in kindergarten. Where sort of the idea that if you make a mistake, there's a consequence. It's usually later, I think, when we start to get grades assigned to us. I remember when our girls were very little, our second-born, Lindsay, she brought home a paper, and she must have been in second grade or third grade, and the teacher had these stickers that she'd put on. And sometimes it was a sunshine sticker and it meant you did great, and sometimes it was a cloud, you know, like a cloud with the rain and the lightning bolt. And our kid came home with a paper that had a cloud on it. And we just were like pretty blown away by that whole idea of creating that judgment about the good and the bad, the right and the wrong out of this effort to be creative because it was a creative assignment of some kind. And when we're programmed that way from childhood, I think we end up trying to play life safely at various points because we realize there's consequences for making mistakes and safety I guess this is my question to you. In a business that is evolving, it's already had quite a bit of time on the planet but is evolving forward, knowing that the state of the environment that we're in is one of constant change, can you play it safe? Do you want to either invite people onto the team or encourage people on the team to be playing it safe? I think you've already answered the question, but from a cultural standpoint and from just the business bottom line standpoint, How dangerous is it to be playing the game of business, or the game of life, I suppose, safely?

I think there's a difference between playing it safe and being curious about what can change. I think that's important. In fact, Simon Sinek is just in the middle of, or near the end of releasing a new book, and it's called The Infinite Game. A lot of organizations play the finite game, but life is an infinite game. If we think about the power of saying, okay. What are we here to create over time? We know that everything is not going to go just the way we thought it was going to go. Being curious around what it is we want to achieve, and I'm not sure what safe is today. I'm not sure I know what that means. We don't live— we live in a world that's full of volatility, uncertainty, complexity, ambiguity. But, Adam, that's what makes it fun, and that's what helps us really drive those creative juices and move forward to a better place. So I'm grateful that I'm actually standing here today, and life's a gift. We don't want to send it back unwrapped. So let's just really understand. And our job at the company— and I think the greatest satisfaction I know I get as a human being is not marking people's papers, but helping them understand clearly what our A looks like together and then helping them get that A, being the sweeper, if you will, to help them sweep out of the way because life is about getting A's, not about some stupid normal distribution curve.

Yes. Well, first, back to safety. I would define safety as the status quo. I think that's where the great danger is for a company and even for individuals. When we work in organizations, one of the things that they us in to do is to look at where there is a status quo. Where is there, as you say, a belief system that's sort of running unconsciously? In fact, the book Pivot that came out a couple of years ago, one of our chapters is about unbelieving.

Right.

What are the things that are essentially lies that we've either been sort of led to believe by people who have influenced us, which is always the same case, right? It's our parents. The parents get thrown under the bus first, but then it's teachers and other influencers. We adopt those beliefs but don't question them. I love the word curious and curiosity. To encourage that within an organization, in many ways, is probably a big part of the innovation of that organization as well as what brings daily juice, just the feeling that people are actually alive because when we stop being curious about things, we stop moving anything. That's what's so insidious about the status quo is that when things stand still and stop, like water, When water stands still, what ends up happening to it?

It stagnates, gets full of stuff you don't want to be in there.

Yeah, it gets toxic and ultimately, it turns to something that amounts to death. Like when we stop moving our bodies entirely, there's a name for that. So it's rigor mortis. I want to read the purpose of your company because you inspired me when I got to come to the WD office, the corporate headquarters in San Diego. I was really moved by Not only the physical layout of the office, which I know you guys took a lot of time to design specifically with things like collision zones, which I hope you'll share a little bit later about what the collision zone is, but just the idea that physical environment as well as the things that you were teaching, the things that you were learning together as an organization were creating this culture that has a very significant purpose. And I thought to myself, looking at that and thinking about what we've been ourselves as an organization have learned. I think a lot of times companies are trying to figure out what their true purpose is. When you ask them, it's usually somehow related to the benefits of their product or service, and they confuse those things and they get confused with vision, mission, purpose, et cetera. For some time now, I've thought, geez, whatever your purpose is, you should be able to write it on a t-shirt. It should be succinct and clear enough that it could go on a t-shirt. whatever that might be. I want to read your purpose because I thought this was just so clear and it's counterintuitive when people hear this. So this is WD-40's purpose. We exist to create positive lasting memories in everything we do. We solve problems. We make things work smoothly. We create opportunities.

We're in the memories business.

You're in the memories business. But for people who don't actually know what WD-40 is, which would be shocking to me, Please share what the products and services are that this company that's in the memories business is selling in the marketplace.

Well, we're selling solutions, actually, but WD-40, our core product, the blue and yellow can with the little red top, the product was developed just over 65 years ago here in San Diego. It's a true example of being creative and never giving up. There was a problem with corrosion and condensation in the umbilical cord of the Atlas space rocket. The company was then called Rocket Chemical Company. Chemists got together to solve that problem, and 39 of the formulas failed, and the 40th formula was successful. That's why it's called WD Water Displacer 40th Formula. And today that brand is certainly a champion brand here in the US because it's an honest product that does what it says it's going to do. And we now market in 176 countries around the world. There's 8 out of 10 households in the US have a can. And thank goodness, there's a lot of households outside the US that are still getting their first can for the first time. And a lot of artisans, a lot of people don't realize, even though they look at us as a household consumer product, I often say we're not a consumer product, we're a product that's consumed by a wide range of end users. And particularly artisans and tradesmen and people who are creating memories for other people. So one of the wonderful things about being with the company, and I've been here 32 years, is when I talk to people and they say, what do you do? And I say WD-40, they say, oh, I remember when. And I think, yes, it's working. So it's important.

What are some of those things that people tell you about? Because I can imagine that I'm just thinking myself now, what are my memories of WD-40? They're very specific places, actually. I'm curious, what are some kinds of things that you hear? Are they memories about putting together their son or daughter's bicycle at Christmas time and things like that?

Yeah. I was talking to someone the other day and they said, oh, I always remember my granddad. I was out and he had a farm and we used to go out and he'd be working on the farm and I can still remember the smell of WD-40. Or, we sometimes say we're kind of a rocking chair brand in a lot of ways because there's always a connection to some positive outcome in most cases. So, those are the sort of memories that get created. And, I remember fixing my bike— my son's bike with him, as you've just said. So, yeah, it's that connection of a positive outcome. But, you know, you're probably going to cover it later, but importantly, not only why we exist, But how we do it is important, and you would have seen that here. And I think this is a powerful thing in our company because we say we create these positive lasting memories by cultivating a tribal culture of learning and teaching which provides a highly engaged workforce who live our company's values every day. And there's some important words in there: tribal, learning, teaching, engaged,

Yes.

People today are just hungry for true purpose, and I think our role as leaders is to create environments where people go to work every day, they make a contribution to something bigger than themselves, they learn something new, they feel safe because of the values, and they go home happy. Because happy people create happy communities, and happy communities will create a happy world. And to think that 65% of people who go to work today don't like their jobs, to me, is just a sin. And whose fault is it? It's our fault, because we as leaders create these toxic environments. I'm not sure when you were here whether I birthed Al the Soul-Sucking CEO or not, but, you know, I have a guy called Al the Soul-Sucking CEO, and I talk about him when I'm out talking about leadership, and he has these behaviors that don't create a culture of inclusion and a culture where people actually feel like they belong.

Yes. You and I, we got to spend some time, as you said, in the headquarters, and you actually have a teepee. There's a teepee downstairs to represent that tribe, that idea that we want to belong, that people crave that sense of belonging, and we spend more time at work than anywhere else. You're right. Or the statistics, I should say, are not right as much as they are startling in the fact that so many people are unhappy and more than 50%, I think, according to some recent Harris polls, of the workforce are actively looking for another job. So you think about what does toxicity look like in the organization? There are people literally trying to get out.

Absolutely. Absolutely. That's terrible. That's really not a good thing.

It's not, and the cost, the bottom-line cost to turnover is— I don't think it's even calculable. Because you're in losing talent, then having to attract talent and retrain talent, and all the things that are lost in that process by way of productivity. I don't know that you can even put a number on it. I've seen some numbers that say it's something like half a trillion dollars in the US alone, but I don't even know that that could be accurate.

The sad thing, Adam, we're really slow learners, because in 384 BC, Aristotle said, Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work. How long is it going to take us? But, you know, here's the other thing that works against it, is that in most organizations, leaders' ego eats empathy instead of their empathy eating ego.

I want you to say that one more time for folks, please.

It's where ego eats empathy instead of empathy eating ego. And my Al, the soul-sucking CEO, has an enormously enlarged ego. Now, when you get Al and his cousin together, and his cousin is Short-Sighted Sam, so you get Al, the soul-sucking CEO, and Short-Sighted Sam together, and you put them in an organization, you get absolute chaos. Yeah.

And you know what? It's interesting because everything is, as you say, sort of there to be observed and therefore learned, I suppose, that millennials who are misunderstood, in my opinion, a misunderstood group of the workforce, they're transferring, they're exiting organizations at about every 18 months. That's a lot of transition.

Absolutely.

Even for somebody that wrote a book about career transition, every 18 months is a lot of transitioning. I think it's just what you're talking about, when they find themselves in a culture where their souls are being sucked. It's one thing if you're making a lot of money, and I think that's also a part of what's happening in the tech space in some places where the prospect of becoming very, very wealthy is having people sort of think that workaholism, that it's an aspirational lifestyle to work 110 or 120 hours like Elon Musk is sort are declaring you must do. I don't know that that's the answer, but there's great purpose that's driving that, whether it's to get rich or it's to go to space and whatever other things are being sort of dangled in front of folks. But where there's a lack of purpose or where you can feel that your soul's being sucked and you're not being taken care of, rewarded financially, there's no reason to stay. So I just think they're so much smarter than we were. Or at least our generations because we would put in 10 years before we'd figure that out.

Right.

We'd give our life's blood to something. I did it for 18 years. I was an attorney for 18 years and frankly, most of that was my sense of responsibility to my family, to my clients, and the fact that I was being, you know, making sort of an obscene amount of money.

But as you told me, Adam, there was a great song by the Beatles, right? Money Can't Buy You Love.

Nope. Or a good night's sleep.

Or a good night's sleep.

Wow! The pace of change over the last couple of years has been rapid and if you're a leader, a business owner, an entrepreneur, you know exactly what I'm talking about. Every day it's something different and something new. But the one thing that I've learned in performing at the height of all of those roles has been that we must be resilient. In fact, it's the unsung hero in every success story that you will ever hear about. And it's the reason why my team and I created the resilience assessment that more than 5,000 business leaders across the globe have taken, and all you have to do to get your own free Resilient Leader Assessment is go to resiliencerank.com. It takes less than 3 minutes, and it's our gift to you for being the leader that you already are. Other free resources and tools will accompany your score instantly. So go to resiliencerank.com and find out just how resilient you are. Yeah, it's interesting. I would love it if, as our community is always chomping at the bit for the pivot story or stories, so is there a place in your career where you might have found yourself in that situation where you didn't know which way to go next, or you kind of hit a bottom point? And it could be in the business side of things and the model wasn't working, or you weren't working in the model, or it could be personal, but anything at all that you want to share would be— I know people would just love that.

Yeah, I think one of the big pivots in my life is back in 1994, I moved from Sydney, Australia to San Diego. And I came from an environment which I'd lived in all my life and I knew which side of the road to drive on and it's a different side over here. Anyhow, I arrived here and suddenly I realized that there were lots of things I didn't know. And then in '97, I got to lead the company and I really realized that micromanagement was not scalable. You know, I was the typical be brief, be bright, be gone guy. On the DiSC scale, I was probably a Turbo D, and I was a driver. And then I looked at, how am I going to take this blue and yellow can to the world? So I went back to school, and I went to the University of San Diego, and I did a master's degree in leadership. And that's where I met Ken Blanchard. He was my professor in one of the classes. And my goal going back to school was I wanted to confirm what I thought I knew. And learn what I didn't know. And what I didn't know and what I learned was there's a balance between being tough-minded and tender-hearted. And if you can get that balance right, you can absolutely create an organization. And if you look at most organizations, they are very focused on strategy and execution, but there's some elements that need to have equal focus: people, values, and learning. We put this model together that says we're going to spend an equal amount of time on what's our purpose, what are our values, and how do we learn as we do on strategy and execution. Because if you just spend it in that strategy execution, I call that the typhoon zone. Because eventually, in the short term, you may be very successful, But you'll blow out either personally or the organization because it's not sustainable. You can't build an enduring life or an enduring company over time if you're just burning out in this typhoon. And that to me was a big aha moment. And that was the pivot that I took. I consciously went from saying, I'm going to not be a Turbo D anymore. I'm going to say I'm going to get the balance between tough-minded and tender-hearted. As good as I can. And I worked on it. And that was the time that was really, really the time when I made that change.

Yes.

And it was hard. It was really hard.

Okay. Begs the question, what was really hard about it?

Letting go of ego.

So the distinction between tough-minded and tender-hearted, or not even the difference, but the harmony between those two, has to do with a letting go or a release or dying of the ego? Is that

Well, yeah, I think that if you look at tough-minded and tender-hearted, tender-hearted is empathy, tough-minded is ego.

Hmm.

And if you get it out of balance either way, if you get either of them out of balance, people who work in organizations that are too tender-hearted feel at risk. People who work in organizations that are too tough-minded feel at risk. So servant leadership is not about holding kumbaya singing lessons on a Friday afternoon. But if you don't get that balance right, if you don't balance those 2 out, you don't have the optimal cultural environment where, yeah, people expect leaders to be able to make tough decisions, but they also want them to be tenderhearted in thinking about what they're doing. So you've got to get that balance.

Yeah. And ultimately, this is what contributes to resilience, to the longevity, like we talked about at the beginning. When I'm going in more often than not these days to do keynotes at companies, that's what they bring me in for. Let's talk about what, what does resilient leadership look like? How does that contribute to performance? Because we all know whether you're a public company or a private company, performance counts. I mean, you will get graded, so to speak, on how the company does perform, but if the company's not around long enough, you can't win a race that you don't finish for one thing.

Absolutely. And you know, that's why one of our values is we value sustaining the WD-40 economy. That's our final value in the company because a robust economy supports the resilience and the ability to be able to develop the people. But if you don't have the people performing at a high level, then you're not going to have a robust economy. To me,

it's like, duh. Yes, duh. So it sounds to me, at least I want to interpret this for folks that might be thinking, so where does a company allocate resources, or what's the proper allocation of resources, especially for companies that are maybe less mature, that don't have a lot of cash reserves sitting in the bank? The allocation of time, energy, and money toward the personal development, not the development of the talent, as well as the organizational development as a learning culture, versus the, hey, we've got to make sales thing. Hey, we've got to get our marketing straight to make sales to be able to survive in such a difficult economic environment. I mean, the environment's changing all the time. So is there a way to look at that allocation that you learned along the way? And part of it is going to be trial and error for sure.

You know, I'm not smart enough to tell anybody how they should allocate their resources in their business, but I don't think it's a resource issue. You don't have to be an ass is really what it's about. How much does it cost to say please and thank you? How much does it cost to recognize people? Most people only know they're doing a good job because no one yelled at them today. It doesn't cost anything to treat people with respect and dignity. That's really what it gets down to.

More than 80% right now of the people who are dissatisfied, who say they're dissatisfied at work, are dissatisfied because they can't stand their supervisor.

Right. They hate their boss. Why? Because he treats them badly. He treats them poorly. Care, candor, accountability, and responsibility is what it's all about. Care for your people. Be candid with them. No lying, no faking, no hiding. Hold you and them accountable, but be sure that you're clear what we're holding each other accountable for. And then be responsible as a leader and a coach. And a coach doesn't spend time on the field. The coach is in the locker room and on the sideline watching the play and helping the player win. It's called side-by-side leadership. Get alongside your people. and help them get an A. We're not here to mark their paper. We're here to help them step into the best version of their personal self and treat them with respect and dignity.

And from leadership, that's modeling as well.

Yeah. It's not rocket science.

Because if you're a parent, most parents realize this, that their kids don't listen to them. I'll just speak from my own experience. Our youngest is now 18 and leaving the house, but the other ones are older. And they very rarely sort of listen, but they were always watching us and seeing Is there a congruence or the story that's coming out of my dad's mouth, does that match up with what he's doing himself and in his life? I think one thing that I want to underscore that you said was that you don't necessarily have to have a big budget, let's say, to create the kind of environment. As Yogananda said, environment is stronger than will. The environment that you can create is one that would long-term create a culture for sustainability, For longevity, for resilience, right? At the same time, you're creating that culture, you're also watching the things that you have to measure to know whether you're on target or not, right?

Okay. Look back at learning. We had these principles that describe our how and our tribal culture of learning and teaching, of values, of belonging, of celebration. We started all this 22 years ago. Back then, we had employee engagement nearly as horrible Not quite as horrible, but nearly as horrible as most people have in the companies they're working for today. Looking back, we said, okay, if we deploy the principles that we know of, the care, candor, accountability, responsibility, our tribal culture, and go forward. What's happened over that period of time? Today, our employee engagement is 93%. 99% of our people say they love to tell people they work at WD-40 Company. Now, here's the cut. Our market cap has gone from just around $300 million to $2.4 billion over that period of time. We've had a compounded annual growth rate of total shareholder return of about 12%. In the last 10 years, it's been 20%. We sell oil in a can. No, we don't. We're in the memories business. I think we have an absolute demonstrated record of if you build employee engagement, And you build a place where people want to go to work every day and make a contribution and learn something new, you will drive your economic engine.

Yes.

At the same time, our revenues have quadrupled, by the way.

So, since we've got those 4 things, I'd love it if you'd just give us a one-liner for each of the 4 because I'm sure at this point people have driven off the road, pulled off the road to take notes, stopped the treadmill, got out their phone, and they're taking notes now. So, what are those 4 things again? Start with care, if you would.

Care. You have to have an environment where you care for your people.

Now, let's all go, duh.

Yeah, duh.

Except it doesn't exist in most workplaces, so it's not quite a duh. But yes, so care. Yes?

Candor. Candor is no lying, no faking, no hiding. Most people don't lie, but because of fear, people fake and hide in organizations. If you've got an organization that is riddled with fear, You'll get people faking and hiding.

Exactly. Sometimes called political correctness as well.

Whatever.

Exactly.

Care, accountability. Now accountability is what do you expect from me as a leader and what do I expect from you and do we have agreement around that? The reason we let people down in life in most cases is because there's no clarity around what we expect from each other. So have the conversation.

It's not expectations that are the issue. It's unstated expectations.

Exactly. So what do we expect from each other? And then be brave enough to hold each other accountable. And if you care enough about your people around accountability, you won't be afraid to have those loving conversations that some people sometimes call tough conversations. The more I care about people, the more I want to say to someone, Adam, I care about you. I want you to succeed. Here's what I've observed is getting in your way. How can I help you get that out of your way? Because you're better than this. And I know that you can achieve personally and professionally what you want in life. And there's nothing that will give me more joy than to see you do that. So stop being an ass.

You're an Aussie. So candor comes easily to you, I think, more easily than somebody— do you like baseball as an Australian living in the US? Okay. So what I love when it comes to accountability is the example that's set in baseball, where if the pitcher is not doing well in a game, What's the first sign of that typically? I mean, the balls are flying around, runs are being scored, but then what happens on the field? Yeah, third baseman comes in, the catcher comes out, the pitcher—

Oh yeah, yeah.

Coach comes out, right? They're huddled on the mound. So to me, that conversation isn't a conversation that's based in judgment, right? So they don't go out there and go to the pitcher who's having a hard time, they go, buddy, you suck. You don't belong in the major leagues. We're going to send you, hit the showers, and then head back to Little League baseball. That conversation looks very differently when they get out there. They want to know, how you doing? Well, my son was a pitcher for a while and I used to coach him. And I remember what those conversations even in Little League were like, that everybody came in and they had only one goal in mind, right? I mean—

Pump him up.

Pump him up. And what's the goal for the team?

Yeah.

Only one goal for the team, right? That's to win a game. That's all they're interested in. So, that accountability isn't based in judgment. It's based in love. It's like, A pat on the back. It's like, how's your arm? How are you doing? Did we have mixed signs or are you feeling like you want to leave the game? It's a conversation, but it's based in love. And I think that's one of the hardest things in leadership is to be able to hold people accountable, as you're saying, from a place of love versus a place of fear or judgment or anything else that has people playing on protection. They'll protect themselves and avoid responsibility or taking responsibility if they think they can't get a fair shake anyway, right? I really hope you're enjoying this episode of the Change Proof podcast. If you've not yet gone out and gotten your own copy of Change Proof, it's not too late. You can get your copy right now by going to changeproof.com and not only getting the book and all the bonuses there, but getting access to our proprietary resilience assessment tool. It'll just take you 3 minutes to do, and it's something that will really help you to utilize the book even more effectively to create practices and rituals and habits that will increase your mental, emotional, physical, and even spiritual resilience for the long term. Again, go to changeproof.com to get your copy today.

Have you heard of mbuthu?

Mbuthu?

Yeah.

I've heard the word. I don't know what it is.

Okay. Mbuthu, it comes from tribalism in Africa. And what it is, is this. If in a tribe, someone does something wrong or makes a mistake, what mbuthu is, the tribe takes that person and sits them in the middle of the tribal surroundings. And for 2 days, they tell them how good they are at things to encourage them out of the bad behavior. That's— if you read up about it, mbutu, it's fantastic.

Beautiful. So accountability—

That's what you were describing. That was baseball mbutu.

It's that mound. It's that circular mound. So we've got care, candor, accountability, and then

Right. I think you were here when you, you may have read our Maniac Pledge.

I did, yes. Took pictures of it as well.

It says, I'm responsible for taking action, asking questions, getting answers, and making decisions. I won't wait for someone to tell me. If I need to know, I'm responsible for asking. I have no right to be offended that I didn't get this sooner.

And if I'm doing something others should know about, I am responsible for telling them.

There you go. You got it.

Way cool. Way cool. You know what? Well, this is beautiful. You hit the point that I wanted to go to, which was, what was the culture like? What was the company like before you sort of had your awakening? And I know it didn't all turn around in a day, so we might as well just declare that out loud as well because the results you've got are fairly uncommon. I'm not saying it's the only company that's ever had that kind of a change or transformation, but you're a model for it. So, how long did it take and how ugly was it in the process of getting From point A to where you are now?

I often say it was simple, not easy, and time is not your friend. This is a journey. It's not a short journey. So you've got to establish it. And then culture is no different than when we went to school. You remember we used to get a petri dish and we could put stuff in it and we made culture, right? And it grew over time.

That culture, yes.

Yeah. And what did we do? We had to mind the petri dish. We had to take out the antibodies. We had to make sure the right ingredients. We had to put it in the right temperature. Maybe it was in a refrigerator or in a heating cabinet. That's the same. So this thing has to be nurtured and nurtured and nurtured. And that's the job of leadership.

Yes. The pivots constantly.

Pivot, pivot, pivot, pivot, pivot.

Making a little change in direction, which is Buckminster Fuller's trim tab analogy of small changes, the law of small

I heard someone say the other day, I was at a luncheon and a young lady made a comment and she said, I haven't come this far not to go further. I think that's what's important about culture. When you have culture, you haven't come this far not to take it further. You have to continually take it further.

I guess that states the fact that, as a company, you invest in education. You're continually, not just you yourself, writing books and educating yourself, being a model for that, but the company invests in education for the company, for the people that work there as well.

Absolutely. Well, our how statement says by a culture of learning and teaching. The number one responsibility of a leader is to be a learner and a teacher. That's the number one responsibility.

I think it's at the top of the pyramid for society as a whole, for communities, because that goes to the same thing that that circle around the fire Where someone stood up and shared what they learned. That person was the shaman, the wise person, the chief, whoever it was. But that leader learned something and then shared it with others, and that's teaching.

That's it.

It's the highest value we've got, and a different conversation for a different day, but we know that teachers are not always valued in our society the way they ought to be.

Absolutely.

So Gary, this has been a wonderful conversation that I know we could keep going on forever and ever. I want to, in wrapping up, ask you about your personal rituals and whether there's something in particular Through that, all those hills and valleys, and people know what that's like themselves. Just something that you've been doing on a ritual basis that helps you either physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually even, that you'd be willing to share.

One thing, and I learned this from Marshall Goldsmith, let it go. I think that's really important in life is you've got to empty the rocks out of the backpack on a daily basis because eventually if you don't, That backpack will weigh you down. So I try to make sure that I live each day as today is, and I think that's important. So I'm always up early, around 4 o'clock every morning. I start my day with a little understanding of who I am. I try to center myself. I have some personal meditation that I do, which is really just to center myself and make sure that I have clarity around the importance of understanding that, you know, this day is the only day I really have. So I better the best. I have a personal why statement. I wake up every morning to help people create positive, lasting memories. The most exciting part of that is finding all the different ways to do it.

Indeed. What a pleasure. I want to hold up your book as well so folks that are seeing this on YouTube, you can check it out. This is the book that you wrote with Ken Blanchard, who was your professor at the time, which is pretty ripping cool, Helping People Win at Work. There will be, of course, in the show notes, a link to find out more about this book and about yourself and about the company, and I invite people certainly to check all that out. The last thing I want to say anyway is that I so respect the fact that you've put in the years that you have to create the model for a sustainable, positive place for people to go and share their gifts with the world. Thank you. That is no small feat today, and I'm sure you've heard a few good things, a few positive things about your job, but that's a pat on the back moment to celebrate and really, Wonderful. So thank you for doing that. Thank you on behalf of the whole marketplace.

Thank you. I, as I said earlier, I rejoice in an abundance of worthwhile work.

Yeah, I have my own set of really beautiful memories attached to the WD-40 product, and I only look forward to the ones in the future because we have a particular use for that product every summer, and it's all about family, it's all about friends and just enjoying life. So thank you, Gary, appreciate it. I know that our community will have lots of comments So, those comments can be addressed to adamarkel.com/podcast or you can leave a review on iTunes. Everybody, we love that. Of course, you can go to our Facebook group, Start My Pivot Community in Facebook and leave questions there for myself, for Gary, and we just love to get your feedbacks like oxygen. As we started our program with gratitude, so shall we conclude, and that is with a great reminder. So, I'm going to ask you a funny question, Gary. I'm going to ask this question. I know the answer already, but— Did you wake up today?

I did.

You did. You see, it's so interesting. I get the honor to ask that question to people all over the world, and it's a curious question because some people are ready to say, yes, of course I did, and they get it. And then there are folks that are not so sure. I'll ask them, how many of you are not so sure? How many of you still working on it, right? And that's the truth. We are in many ways not always awake. In fact, in many of the years I worked in Manhattan, I would walk past people and see just sort of a deadness just a lack of life in the eyes and thinking that people are just sort of walking around dead, not knowing it. So to wake up our awareness, to be more conscious is clearly a goal. And so my hope and my prayer is that everybody that's listening to this, watching this right now, that you wake up again tomorrow, that I wake up, Gary, that you wake up and everybody at your company does as well, because that's not a guarantee. There's no guarantee. And in fact, when we also recognize tomorrow morning that we are taking our first breath of the day, we can be similarly aware that there will be people taking their very last breath in that same exact moment. So it's not something to take for granted. We all have challenges. There's plenty of things to complain about. But my belief is that, as you were saying, Gary, that we all have an assignment, and that's why we've been given another day. So, 3 steps to my waking ritual: that we wake up first, LOL, right? Yes, let's wake up. 2, that we can feel that gratitude for that moment where we realize we have been given another day. And 3rd, if you're willing to do this, to take just 10 seconds, 10 seconds out of your precious day before it gets going and put your feet on the floor and feel gratitude and appreciation for yourself. And that you might even out loud declare these words: I love my life. I love my life. Gary, what are the words?

I love my life.

Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Ciao for now, everybody. We'll see you soon. Thank you again.

Thanks for listening, everyone. We hope you now have the tools and greater insights to navigate your own pivot. Help us inspire others by sharing this episode and leaving your comments over at adammarkel.com/podcasts. For more tips, strategies, For strategies and support as you consciously pivot into a new business and lifestyle you love, join our Pivot Community on Facebook at pivotfb.com.