The British CEO behind WD-40

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0:41We look forward to seeing you there. 16 uses for WD-40? Everyone should know. WD-40 is a multi-purpose lubricant, often used to loosen rusty nuts and bolts. But it has many other uses. Number 1. Clean Stainless Steel Stainless steel is a beautiful material, but it can be hard to keep clean. 2. Remove strong glue Removing glue from your hands can be a real nightmare. No matter how hard you scrub, the glue just won't come off. But all hope is not lost. WD-40 is here to save the day. Just spray some on your hands. You don't have to look far on YouTube to find videos extolling the virtues of WD-40.

1:27The product comes in an iconic yellow and blue canister. Most of us have it somewhere in a drawer at home or perhaps tucked away in the corner of our garage. It's most commonly used as a lubricant as a way to do things like loosened jammed locks, though it can be used for a variety of other tasks. Everyone has heard of this product, but do we really know much about it?

1:51I'm Dougal Shaw and this is the Business Leader Podcast, where we look at the stories and strategies behind modern businesses. Today I'm meeting up with a man who knows all about WD-40. The chances of success in developing your core business are much greater than going into adjacent businesses. Staying true to what you're strong at, what you're good at, where your capabilities are and where your strengths are is much more powerful than either innovating into new areas or even acquiring businesses that are in different areas. Steve Brass is the Yorkshireman who has been at the WD40 company for more than three decades and who became its CEO in 2022.

2:32He relocated his whole family to San Diego, California to take up the top job. But I caught up with him on a rare trip to London. He was in town to celebrate the 40th anniversary of WD40 in the UK. It's been trading and distributing from its base here in Milton Keynes since 1985. WD-40 Company is listed on NASDAQ and valued at around$3 billion. Brass explained to me the history of the company, what it's like to be a Brit leading it in the US, and I also got his take on how you foster innovation in a company whose reputation rests mainly on one hero product.

3:13I expect a lot of people listening to this, like myself, will have WD-40 in the shed at home, in a cupboard, in the garage, and they kind of have a rough idea of what it does, but they don't really know what it is. So how do you explain it to people? Sure. So the product, I mean, it's like a lot of great products. It was developed back in the 50s as part of the space race in America. And so three scientists at the rocket chemical company were trying to solve a problem with corrosion in the umbilical cord of the atlas missile back then and so they had 39 goes and couldn't find the right formula on the 40th formula attempt they struck gold and and the scientist who took the log at the time of the product name wrote it down as wd water displacement 40 40th formula and so yeah that's the kind of the nature of the product developed the space race and then this company rocket chemical company and then started selling the product in San Diego to local companies, industrial companies.

4:11And they realized after a little while that employees at these industrial companies were stealing the product and taking it home. And so they realized they had a consumer product on their hand and kind of the rest is history. I was discussing this in the office, a little debate, and I was saying, for example, I had a bike lock that was seized up recently and I sprayed WD-40 on it, waited a bit, and then it would work again. It kind of eased up. But what's the difference between doing that with WD-40 or putting in oil, physical oil? Sure. And so I have a locksmith that visits my house. I'm always intrigued as to what products he turns up with.

4:45And so he turns up. So we have a range of complementary products for the pros. And so a lot of our business is actually sold to professional users, tradespeople, industrial end users, about 15 % of our users, but 70 % of the volume. And so I always watch what the pros are using and so this guy fronts up and he had our wd-40 specialist silicone product and so he's using that as a pro to lubricate locks and and actually windows as well so i asked him you know the core product what did he what does he use the core product for he goes i use wd-40 core product the multi-use product to break into houses so professional locksmith when he can't get the lock open he just uses it and and puts a what a credit card or whatever and i guess it makes the it makes it easy to break into houses.

5:31So in layman's terms is it water displacement because that's helping to unsettle the rust and that's what you know unseizes things? Sure it's multiple things working together and so it's a lubricant it's a degreaser and can remove kind of residues as well yeah absolutely it's a lubricant but it also penetrates and so when you're using the product part of the secret is that all of those functions are working together in tandem and so So, you know, take a lock example. You're spraying WD-40, it's penetrating into the lock, it's lubricating it, and it's protecting it against corrosion simultaneously.

6:07And is it one of these products where the kind of secret sauce, the ingredients of how you make it, are still very secret and fiercely guarded? So it is a trade secret. We never patented the product. So if you patent a product, you have to release it after 15, 20 years. And so like Coca-Cola and a lot of other famous recipes, it was kept. And so there's only a very small number of people. I personally don't know the formula, but I have people who are way smarter than me who do. Only a handful of people in the organization do. And the actual secret formula is kept in a bank in San Diego in a bank vault.

6:40I actually got to touch it a little while ago when we visited. And so, yeah, I actually got to hold it. But you know what? I couldn't understand it anyway. So it's written on a piece of paper? It's written on a piece of paper. The actual original formula by the original chemist who registered the formula at the time. and so I got to hold the original formula. So I guess you have that copy just in case there was some terrible coincidence and all the people who know how to make it you know perished at the same time isn't it? Exactly yeah. Yeah a lot of companies have tried to I mean whether I mean we have the brand now right and so you know you have the formula on the one side the secret sauce it's kind of like Coca-Cola right I mean Pepsi would claim their formula is pretty similar right but the brand building up the brand takes decades and so yes the product still performs you know we believe better than everything else in the class, but that it's really the brand and the trust that people have now in the brand.

7:30I think there's a very interesting potential business lesson in WD-40 because you do have this one sort of hero product which you are so well known for. And I think if you wind it back to the founder and first CEO, John Barry, he was very much of the view that you stick to what you know, you don't diversify, head down and build this product. First of all, did you ever meet him? Because I think he died in 2009, I think. John Barry, but everybody referred to him as Jack Barry. So when I joined the company back in 1991, Jack Barry was with us from 1969, took us public in 73, and he was CEO until 1990, and then remained as chairman until 1999.

8:16So yeah, in my early years, I did encounter him several times and he was kind of like this Mr. Magoo character, a wonderful, you know, he brought his financial discipline as a business. He was very careful with his expenses. He flew everywhere economy class and was a really down-to-earth, practical man. But what he really did was he joined the company and, you know, renamed the company almost immediately from Rocket Chemical Company to W40 Company. end of the 60s and then abandoned all the other products and focused only on the core product for 35 years which is quite a a bold move and so grew the business from around a million dollars in 1969 to to to just when he finished we're about 95 million I believe by the time he finished as CEO and his his he used to have this term it's a very American term but you know don't be a blind dog in a meat house is one of his phrases.

9:11And what it really means is stay focused on your core product. And I mean, I'm so glad we did. And he basically, you know, ignored just about every rule of marketing there is, right? Marketing is all about positioning your product. And so he was very keen, you know, to do the opposite really of what most businesses do. Most businesses selling one or two trade channels and sell a whole range of products for those trade channel. We flipped that on its head and we saw one product to multiple trade channels, multiple countries, which is kind of almost the opposite of what most businesses do. But it's been very, very successful.

9:45That absolute focus on what you're really good at is a really powerful business lesson, I think. And so, you know, I often find myself repeating things that Jack Barry said, you know, 40, 50 years ago, because they're still universally true. I think another thing he did was he kept what he called a graveyard of imitators. Did you ever get to see that? We still have it in San Diego office. We have downstairs as we give our tour, we show there's lots of products that have come out, including some pretty big companies, companies that are much, much bigger than WD-40 company that have had a go at making either a copy of the product or their own version of it, often in similar colors, right?

10:23Trying to rip off. We do protect our trade dress globally, our IP, you know, very, very vigorously around the world. But yeah, there's been a lot of serious attempts. And I think really, it's that out and out focus on what you're really good at in this niche category. You know, we can have market share within our own category, right, which we've developed 70 to 80 % market share. And, you know, that means it gives you a lot of brand power, it gives you a lot of, you know, power when you're dealing with major retailers, for example, they kind of have to stock our brand. And so even though we're quite a modest and medium-sized company,$600 million, we have a great deal of brand power.

11:04It must have happened in the 70s and 80s that as it was clear how big the product was becoming and the revenues, there would be investors saying, come on, you've got to do licensing deals with people. You've got to work with others. And maybe there's some mergers and acquisitions you can do. Did Jack have to resist that pressure? They did. And we all have that pressure, right? And so people will give you advice all the time. But my predecessor, Gary Ridge, who led the company for 25 years, I mean, many of us, Jack Barry was 30 years in the company. The next CEO, Jerry Schleif, who's a marketing genius working with Jack Barry, he was 30 years in the business.

11:41Gary Ridge was 30 plus, and I'm 30 plus. And so that commitment to developing people internally to grow with the business brings you continuity of approach. And we have so much growth opportunity. The core brand, the multi-use product, the blue and yellow cam with a little red top, we're only at 28 % of our global potential today after 71 years. And so, you know, that's where our focus needs to be, as well as extending the brand now into the W40 specialist range. You know, as part of my tenure, we are looking at divesting the household brands, some of the brands we've acquired, things like 1 ,001 in the UK.

12:18So that process is ongoing. But there's a real temptation to what my predecessor, Gary, would refer to as, you know, de-worsifying, right? Which is, you know, oh, we need to do new stuff. We need to innovate. Well, actually, do we, right? What we need to do is make sure that the product remains relevant. And so, you know, as I think about our brand, you know, discovering digital marketing and ways to grow the brand digitally, it's remarkable. People love to tell stories about our brand. So it lends itself very, very well to online storytelling in particular. Actually, that leads on to one side question I was going to ask, which is we all know what WD-40 is used for mainly, which is kind of as a lubricant or to free up jammed objects.

13:02But I was reading that there was some strange uses that have come up for it, like polishing your fruit on the table and things like that. Have you heard about that? I'm not sure that's not our official 2 ,000 uses. So we do publish a 2 ,000 uses list, which has been vetted by our science and technical people. But people come up with all kinds of weird stuff. Every couple of years, you'll get some newspaper article about people using the product for arthritis on their joints or stuff. We do not endorse that. Okay. I'll be very clear. But no, I mean, it has lots of wonderful uses. And so if you have kids at home, you know, it will remove crayon marks, for example, on walls.

13:40It will remove, you know, sticky labels. if you buy new glasses or crockery it's one of the few products if you spray wd-40 on a label on a glass leave it for a few minutes you can usually just peel it off and the residue will come off because that's a very painful thing to do things like um people spray it they you know people write in all the time and tell us their uses and so people for example using on their lawn mowers to stop grass sticking to the bottom of their fly mower right i mean i don't know how this came up right but people just experiment the product is safe to use on most surfaces And so, yeah, people feel very free to experiment and they love telling us about the uses.

14:16Looking at WD-40, the company and how it's developed, it reminds me a bit of, you know, the Jim Collins book, Good to Great. And he talks about the hedgehog principle where you really need to stick to the one thing you're good at and don't be a fox that gets distracted by these side ideas. That was a direction that Jack Barry took you in, I suppose. Yeah, and I think there's another great book written in the 1990s called Focus, The Future of Your Company Depends on It by Al Rees and Jack Trout. and that book actually Gary when he retired and handed or refired as he calls it and hands over to hand it over to me he gave me a copy of that book in a plaque with you know this has been my guiding light for the past 25 years don't forget the lessons of focus and so yeah I think that was the one message Gary wanted to transmit to me was do not be tempted by you know these opportunities to de-worsify away from your core strategy stay true to the core strategy it works and we have a huge growth opportunity around the world.

15:10You talked earlier about divesting and refocusing even again the product. So what kind of products had you taken on? Did you take on lava soap? Was that one? Yeah, some household cleaning products, right? So Spot Shop, which is a carpet cleaning product, 1001 range in the UK, which is carpet cleaning and freshening. And so you're competing in a very different area. It's a different consumer, actually. It's mainly a female consumer versus a very male oriented consumer although that is changing on certainly on the diy and the trade side actually as we go forward and so they're just not core it's a different uh it's a different shelf in retailers there's very few synergies there really and so as we think about kind of you know pivoting to kind of sustainability it's about how do we as a business you know simplify our business even further so that we're able to innovate for sustainability going forward now, which is a very important part of our mission for the next 10, 15 years, simplifying the business so that we're able to reinvent a lot of our formulations going forward for sustainability.

16:17So you did have your little moments of being a fox business. We tried some different things, but it's even now it's still being the hedgehog and refocusing, focusing. Yeah, and that's learning. And so the thinking around kind of the 2000s is exactly that. It's like we could diversify, right? We could, you know, the mantra back then was from a brand fortress to a fortress of brands. We tried it and it didn't work. And that's an important learning, right?

16:43You're a Yorkshireman. That's where you grew up. Tell us how you got from Yorkshire all the way to San Diego.

16:51So I discovered early in my life a passion for languages. And so I went and studied French and German at university. and then moved into international sales. And so I only worked, I've only had two and a half years working outside of W40 Company. The rest has been working with W40. And so I went into international sales in the wire industry. And when I joined W40 Company, I told my father, who's a growth northerner, that I was going to move into fast-moving consumer goods. And my dad's response was, fast-moving consumer goods. I've had a tin in my garage for 25 years. and so I think you know I bring that kind of brusque kind of northern no-nonsense kind of approach to to business and I got in early so we're celebrating our 40 years of W40 in the UK this year our business here our European head office in Milton Keynes was founded in 1985 back then I think we were like 12 people and eight million dollars of eight million pounds sorry, of turnover.

17:53And so I was able to get in kind of right at the start of this wonderful, proven global brand, beginning its growth journey in Europe. And so after six months with the company, I was given the opportunity to set up our French business. I had no idea what I was doing. I was 25 years old. A few years later, I moved to Germany and lived in Germany for four years. And so the company has just continuously given me these opportunities successively to learn and grow and take on more responsibilities. And I try to do that for leaders that are growing within the company also. In 2016, though, you made the big decision to relocate your whole family to San Diego.

18:30So was that a tough decision to make? It wasn't, it wasn't. So I've always been fortunate to have a partner and a family that have supported me. And so my wife went for the adventure and my kids too. And we went out and checked out. It wasn't that hard, right? We took them, it was Christmas. We went and did a kind of a recce tour to San Diego. It was like 25 degrees during Christmas, right, and sunny. And so it's like, okay, this is not a bad place. And so, yeah, we moved with two out of three kids to San Diego. And, yeah, it was a great decision. Nine years ago, I was given the chance to lead the America's division back then, which was a really culturally interesting kind of learning experience as well.

19:12When I look back at kind of what people say about the U.S., right, And so, you know, you do have this kind of experience in Europe of people kind of working to live. And I think the experience in the U.S. is very much people live to work. And, you know, whether the hours they work or the amount of kind of holiday they take, right? And so the typical holiday allowance in the U.S. is two to three weeks, where it can be as long as seven weeks in Europe, right? Five, six, seven weeks. you know we often say we're two countries kind of you know separated by a common language and I think there's a lot of truth to that and so yeah just learning the culture you can't assume that the culture is the same the U.S.

19:53had this huge positive can-do attitude which is a British is quite exhausting sometimes right but it is the reason why they are the most powerful economy in the world it's just this you know positivity and can-do kind of kind of attitude my my son on his His first day at school, in high school in the US, was asked by one of his teachers how he was and he responded, I'm okay, thanks, which is about as good as it gets for a UK teenager. And his teacher's response was, I'm sorry to hear that. And so he learned very quickly to adapt. It's like, the next time it's like, how are you, Adam? It's like, I'm awesome.

20:30Thank you. Everything's got to be awesome, right? And so, yeah, it's just very positive and you've just got to adapt as a Brit to living in with this huge positivity. I think, you know, kind of the rain probably spoils us all a little bit right over here. Yeah. You were obviously well established at the company before you took the CEO role, but you're still a Brit going in to lead this American company. Was there any issues around that? Did you have to sort of win over some people? Yeah, I guess you're coming in as an outsider and who's this guy, right? A lot of people don't know you. And so, you know, hopefully I had a bit of a track record.

21:06So I had a lot of experience, you know, success behind me, you know, leading teams in Europe, 25 years of leading the businesses around Europe. And so I ended up kind of number two in Europe as commercial director. Yeah, but then moving to America, the US, it was very different. And so and just running the US business was fascinating. You're managing, you know, customers the size of countries, right, The Walmarts, the Home Depots, I mean, they're equivalent to many of our country operations in Europe. And so, yeah, the stakes are a little higher. But again, a real learning experience. And so, you know, those experiences where you move to another country, you kind of, you know, disrupt yourself.

21:46I mean, they're the biggest learning experiences that you're ever going to have as an individual. And so, you know, both the Germany experience, living four years in Germany, and then, you know, my experience of working and adapting to the U.S. culture. They've been two of the biggest learning and growth opportunities in my lifetime. And I think one of your role models as a leader, though, is a British person, Scottish person, Sir Alex Ferguson. So what lessons have you taken from him? I mean, I look back at the way, I mean, it's Alex Ferguson, you know, most of the most successful football coach, right?

22:22Was it 37 cups or titles in 28 years, I believe, or something like that. A big part of his success was down to identifying younger talent through the academy. And so we take a very similar kind of leadership philosophy. And like myself, I was given the opportunity to run country operations aged 25. And so, you know, giving younger talent an opportunity to show what they can do is a big part. And so, you know, when you do that, and Alex Ferguson showed that with Man United, all of that academy there's academy academy players the gigs the skulls the beckons and they all came through and you get longevity out of your team then i mean you still had a kind of process of renewing the team every four years and keeping that fresh but um yeah we do that so as a business um over 70 percent of our leadership positions are filled internally and and the team know that right and so that was always a promise to me it's like well you know as you go through your career there's always opportunities maybe somebody tries to recruit you're in or you know you're maybe going through a not great period right for a year or so um but you know sticking with the business and being able to grow with one business like ours is a phenomenal opportunity we continue to grow every year you know steady growth we're not setting the world on fire but um you have very steady growth you look back five ten years you know steady six seven percent growth on our core products and so you know by doing that you're creating opportunities for your people continuously.

23:54I can see the benefits from that and that you have a very strong working culture people understand the business because they've grown up in it but I suppose there must be a kind of flip side danger of it that you could start to get groupthink after a while or a bit too much conformity so as CEO do you ever have to do anything to kind of recalibrate a little bit? Yeah absolutely and so it starts with yourself as CEO and so I was very conscious of that and so So after, I mean, what was it, 10 years or so in the business, or less than that, seven years in the business, I went out and did my executive MBA at London Business School here just to give myself that external perspective, right, as well.

24:30And so you get your strategy toolkit from doing that. And ever since I went through that high-class learning experience, I was very keen to bring some of those folk in. And so I brought in my brand tutor from London Business School, Mark Ritson, into our business. and he coached us globally on brand strategy. And so, yeah, we absolutely bring in, we kind of punch above our weight for the size of business we are. And so I look at how the big organizations are being kind of trained and developed and we bring that into our company as a medium-sized company. So we're always bringing in external best practice in terms of key areas of our thinking to challenge and make us better.

25:10And that is absolutely a big part of who I am as an individual and also as a business, you know, this external best practice piece. Otherwise, you do become a little institutionalized. There's power, right? And so having continuity of approach, many of our leaders, our senior leaders are in the business 20 plus years. And so that's a positive in terms of continuity of approach, understanding the business and the strategy, but you still need to kind of refresh your knowledge with external best practice.

25:43Do you regard yourself still as a medium-sized business in the context of America, even though you're on the stock exchange and very high valuation? So we have a$600 million business, so that's classified as kind of a medium-sized business. I mean, our market capitalization is around$3 billion, so that's a mid-cap kind of definition as well. And so, yeah, we're in that mid-cap range with ambitions to be a billion dollars plus. you know it took us 68 years to get to kind of 500 million the next 500 million will probably come within you know within this decade now so um or the next kind of seven to ten year period just by growing at six seven eight percent a year i can see an approach that is focused on long-term growth you don't mind if it's slow it's kind of slow and steady you've got your targets you like to keep people you know close promoting internally and you're a company based in san diego not too far away is Silicon Valley.

26:39And what we hear about Silicon Valley from Britain is that it's all about fail fast. And it's kind of almost showboating about how they'll flirt with failure. And then if it fails, you just learn and move on. So what's your perspective on that from San Diego? Is that like a different world, even in the context of America? Or do you relate to it at all? And so I think in terms of learning, so learning is the core of who we are as a business. And so So we have, culturally, we talk about the learning moment. And so that's really about creating psychological safety. It's okay. We don't make mistakes at WD40 Company.

27:14We have learning moments. And so, yeah, that really is, you know, it's okay. And so, you know, rather than an employee going to their coach, as we call them, versus bosses and saying, I screwed up, boss. It's like I had a learning moment. And the discussion is, hey, well, how can we talk about it? What happened? How do we avoid it happening again? and that's a much easier conversation to have than I screwed up boss right and so that facilitates much more rapid learning I think in terms of learning as a business I mean we went through the pandemic and we had to pivot very very quickly like a lot of businesses to leveraging digital tools and the whole digital space is a really for a legacy company like ours with a brand that lends itself very well to online storytelling.

28:00We've unleashed a massive opportunity to grow the brand around the world via digital marketing tools. And they're tools where you can do exactly what you just spoke about, test very quickly, iterate, A-B test to different campaigns, or, you know, an e-commerce, different product bundles. And so I think digital has been very, very good for us as a legacy business to be able to test, learn, scale up. And then as a global business, trying something in one country and then repeating it in another country. And with the coaches and the learning moments, is that in your formal kind of company protocols, that in your training of managers that you say, this is how we do it?

28:36Absolutely. And so at W40 Company, you only do one appraisal and it's your own. You write your own appraisal and you have a discussion with your coach every 12 weeks. And so part of that is, what learning moments have you had, good or bad? And that's a big, big part of the culture. The learning moment is something we talk about all the time in the business. I often ask people, is there a business lesson that if you could tell your younger self looking back to the start of your business journey, maybe in this case, if you could tell yourself before you first joined WD40, what would it be that would help the young version of you?

29:16I think what I've learned, actually probably more recently, but I would certainly tell my younger self that it's about as you become a leader, the power of co-creation is super important. And so, you know, people, allowing people to, things like strategy, people to get involved and co-create strategy, if they're involved in putting together the strategy, you get much greater buy-in. And then when it comes to executing the strategy, you get much quicker execution of the strategy. And so for me, you know, that would be one of the absolute key learnings of this old African proverb, which I love which is you know if you want to go fast go alone if you want to go far go together and I think that's a universal truth in business you know make sure you're involving as many people as possible I mean I put together the strategy for the company when we refreshed it when I took over I did a global listening tour I spoke to investors I involved the board we had a strategy group with 100 leaders, which is like 15, 16 % of our entire employees population.

30:21We pretty well engage with everybody, every single stakeholder in the business externally and internally to gain their input. And I'm really glad we did because you then get much, much greater buy-in and you end up with a much, much better strategy as well.

30:40You've been listening to me, Diggle Shaw, speaking to Steve Brass, CEO of WD40 Company for the Business Leader podcast. Please do rate and subscribe to us wherever you get your podcasts. We do two episodes every week. And visit the Business Leader website to subscribe to our weekly newsletter.

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