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Succession – a conversation withRich Ashton author of Growing Your Own
0 Playsin 8 hours
Growing Your Own leaders ensures the sustainability of your organisation.
Rich Ashton is an entrepreneur who rescued a company from bankruptcy and over more than thirty years developed Toms Mechanical into a successful business.
When Rich developed an interest in retiring, he started to look for ways in which he could exit that business. After investigating all the options, he decided that the people to continue his work were the people he had been working alongside. The problem was that those people knew how to work in the company, but they did not know how to lead it.
Rich decided to launch a leadership development programme.
In this episode of the Abeceder podcast The Independent Minds Rich explains to host Michael Millward the highs and lows of trying to develop leaders and how that experience led to the publication of his book about developing leaders as part of your succession plan; Growing Your Own.
Rich reflects on the lessons he learnt when things did not go as well as expected and the joy of people exceeding their own expectations of the hand life had dealt them, and seeing them take over the leadership of Tom’s Mechanical
Discover more about Rich and Michael at Abeceder.co.uk
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Transcript
Introduction to Zencastr and Podcast Series
00:00:05
Speaker
Made on Zencastr. Because Zencastr is the all-in-one podcasting platform that really does make every stage of the podcast production and distribution process so easy.
00:00:18
Speaker
Use the link in the description for an automatic discount on subscriptions. Hello and welcome to the Independent Minds, a series of conversations between Abbasida and people who think outside the box about how work works.
00:00:34
Speaker
with the aim of creating better workplace experiences for everyone. I am your host, Michael Millward, the managing director of Apoceda.
Meet Rich Ashton: A Journey from Navy to Real Estate Success
00:00:44
Speaker
In this episode of The Independent Minds, I'm finding out about succession management from Rich Ashton, the author of Growing Your Own.
00:00:56
Speaker
Rich is based in Arlington in Texas. It's not a place that I've ever visited, but if I ever get the chance to go, I will take advantage of the trade prices on travel that I can access because I am a member of the Ultimate Travel Club.
00:01:11
Speaker
I have added a link with a built-in discount to the description so that you can also become a member of the Ultimate Travel Club and just like me, travel at trade prices.
00:01:24
Speaker
Now that I have paid some bills, it is time to make an episode of The Independent Minds that will be well worth listening to liking, downloading and subscribing to, and probably good enough to share with your friends, family and work colleagues as well.
Career Shift: From Real Estate to HVAC Business Ownership
00:01:40
Speaker
As with every episode of The Independent Minds, we will not be telling you what to think, but we are hoping to make you think. Hello, Rich. Good morning, or actually good and good afternoon here.
00:01:53
Speaker
Oh, time differences. It is good evening here from the United Kingdom. And a very wet evening as well. i bet it's not raining in Arlington, Texas, though. You know, it's it's trying to rain today. We haven't gotten a lot of rain this year, but it's trying to right now.
00:02:10
Speaker
Please, could you tell us a little bit about how and why you ended up moving from Seattle to Arlington, Texas, and the career that you've had in those years that you've been there? Well, my move to Texas was a bit of a forced move. i um i dropped out of college and went into the Navy and was stationed in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. and And then I ultimately never left and and settled in Arlington, which is about halfway between Dallas and Fort Worth. And it's been a ah terrific place for business all of that time, which is the reason that I stayed. I began my career with a...
00:02:47
Speaker
large entrepreneurial real estate developer, the Tremel Crow Company, based in Dallas. And I was kind of fortunate to get to to go to work for them. I started at the very bottom of the ladder and became a partner after five years, developed real estate, developed industrial real estate in in Fort Worth and Arlington for for five years, and then decided that My passion was not real estate and and that I kind of needed to prove to myself, since I had always wanted to be a small businessman, that I was succeeding because of me, not because of the the great company that I worked for. So in 1983, I sold my interest back to my partners and charged off into the world of small business.
Turning Around Thomas Mechanical: A Success Story
00:03:34
Speaker
Over the next nearly 45 years, I have owned and operated several businesses, but for the last 38 years, I have owned a company called Thomas Mechanical in the heating and cooling business. And I rescued that company from bankruptcy and through a difficult time, built it into a um ah well-respected and successful company. I still own that company, which is actually now two companies. I still own that company today and and was able to retire from that company the end of last year. So now I am a i'm a ah new retiree. Congratulations.
00:04:13
Speaker
Congratulations. I hope you're having fun in your retirement. I'm having a great time. I'm doing things like this show. And that's that's a new experience for me, but one that's been very fun.
Cultivating Leadership: Training and Challenges
00:04:23
Speaker
Great.
00:04:23
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Now, you retire from an organization, a business that you have been running for 30 odd years. That must have been a big step. It was, but it was a gradual step. So I realized probably a decade ago that because of my age, i wasn't going to be able to do this forever. And I needed to put a succession plan in place.
00:04:46
Speaker
i am I investigated selling the company, but I didn't like the world of and still don't like the world of private equity. And we have a a very unique company, a very high quality company, and I didn't want that company to be cannibalized. So I decided that training the great people that were working with me to become leaders who could ultimately take over the company was an effort worth making.
00:05:14
Speaker
um And i i I started that program to train them. I failed that at the first go around, kind of rejiggered the program and and began a training program which was successful. Started with eight people in the program, finished with six. And those six now now run the company. So it it happened a little bit at a time. I actually, in the year 2025, I was still in the building with them, but I had turned over the responsibilities to that the the leadership team. I was able to watch them up close. So by the time i stepped out at the end of 2025, I knew that they were capable of running the company. So it wasn't just
Entrepreneurship vs. Leadership: Key Insights
00:05:58
Speaker
one step. and and so it was much easier to do it that way for me.
00:06:02
Speaker
Okay, so before we go into the program that worked and led to your retirement, I have to ask you about the first attempt to make it work. What did you do and why didn't it work?
00:06:16
Speaker
It's a great question. i tried to train them to be entrepreneurs like me. And the fact was, it's very hard to teach entrepreneurship. You kind of either are or you're not.
00:06:30
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And I didn't need entrepreneurs. I needed leaders and and managers. And so once I realized why the program was failing, I was able to redesign it and and build it around the people that that that I was looking at and and design a program custom tailored for their skills and their opportunities and their potentials.
00:06:52
Speaker
Okay, it's a great point that you make that just because you're an entrepreneur doesn't mean to say that you're a leader or a manager. It can be two completely different skill sets and the successful entrepreneurs are those that evolve.
00:07:07
Speaker
into the role of manager and leader. It's not it's not at all uncommon for a founder who is an entrepreneur to be kicked out of his own company once he sells or or or brings in outside leaders because what you said is correct. Just because you're an entrepreneur does not make you a leader.
00:07:26
Speaker
Yeah. And it's happened to some very big names as well. It has. You mentioned a few things about the program that worked and you started off with eight people. and you finished up with six so again i've got to be a little bit nasty and say what happened to the two that decided or so the two that didn't finish was it their decision your decision a mutual decision what were the factors that led to that decision being made um One of each. One decided early on in the program that he didn't want to work hard enough at leadership to become a leader.
00:08:00
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he was He was kind of happy with his station in life, and and he was a good employee. he just wasn't going to be a leader. The other was ah a more difficult case as a longtime employee who was a really, really good guy and a good salesman, very ethical, very successful within the organization. But in in small organizations, you often need people to step up as leaders or they can't help hold on to their primary job. That was the case. And he simply was he doesn't think like a leader.
00:08:33
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um he's He's a very emotional guy, not a critical thinker, and he wasn't able to take the principles of the course into his own style. And and ultimately, he was uncomfortable. We had to let him go. We had to make the decision. But um it was ah it was a very painful parting because he was ah he was a big part of our success.
00:08:59
Speaker
Yeah, those sorts of things are always difficult for everyone that's involved. I hope that he's gone on to be successful elsewhere. He actually is someone who deals with us now from the other side, from the supplier side, and and he's he's having success doing that. So it it it worked out well for both of us.
00:09:18
Speaker
Yeah, that's brilliant. Now, this course that you developed, the program, what sort of things did you include? that I would say that the real key to the course was identifying in each of the eight people what limitation was holding back their performance as a leader.
Developing Internal Leaders: Strategy and Skills
00:09:40
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We all have those limitations. Life teaches us what we can't do.
00:09:44
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And, you know, in some cases, it's an upbringing. In some cases, it's just having never thought of themselves as a leader. In some cases, it's being fearful of making decisions or inability to take accountability. Because we're a small company and because we were only dealing with eight people, it was very easy to go around the room and identify what the first ceiling on everybody was. And and once you identify those ceilings, then you can begin to work together to remove that ceiling and break through. And you know in six cases, we were able to do that. In two cases, we were not.
00:10:24
Speaker
Right. Okay. So as someone who spent a long time in HR and management development, leadership development, as you started to call it, you said something that was very, very important.
00:10:38
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You said that you looked at the individuals and worked out what it was that they needed rather than just putting everyone through the same type of program.
00:10:49
Speaker
That can't have been easy, and it certainly won't have been cheap. this We are talking about you making a major investment in those people and yet some people would argue you could have saved an awful lot of money by just bringing in outside managers to take over the business and run it for you. But you chose to develop the people who were working on the shop floor, so to speak, into the people to take the business over.
00:11:17
Speaker
You have to ask the question why. Well, I have to admit to another failure there, and I think it's a failure that occurs routinely in small businesses, and that is that bringing people from who have been trained in large, typically in larger organizations, bringing them into small organizations is often a very difficult transition. It's difficult from both ends, frankly. the The person who has been trained in a large business typically does one, two, three things a day, does them well, does them repetitively.
00:11:51
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When you bring that person into the chaos and disorganization of the typical small business, there's a real disconnect and a real immediate frustration and a thought, hey, I've always done things this way. You need to do it my way.
00:12:05
Speaker
On the other hand, the employees who have been loyal to the founder or the owner, um who have worked in many cases extraordinary hours and given a lot of themselves to the organization, wonder when it was time for someone to be moved into a leadership position, why they weren't given that opportunity. And they tend to resent the outsider. So it's very difficult to bring classically trained leaders into small organizations. It can work. And I i did have some successes at it, but I had many more failures.
00:12:38
Speaker
And then I also had failures promoting people who were not yet prepared. ah You mentioned that it's a big investment. It is a big investment and and it's a big investment of time.
00:12:50
Speaker
um I was fortunate that by the time we started this, the organization had grown to the point where I was not so encumbered by daily activities. We weren't fighting for survival. I had time to think about the organization and the things that made it tick and and where we needed to be in the future. A lot of small business owners don't have that luxury in time.
00:13:13
Speaker
And and i I didn't have it 20 years ago, but 10 years ago, I began to have that kind of time. So it was, I determined it was an investment worth making. Definitely.
00:13:24
Speaker
You're enjoying your retirement now. That's the the return on your investment, isn't it? Yes, daily. Cool. So the program that you dev developed, what sort of things did you include?
00:13:38
Speaker
the The program starts with communication. And ah community you know if if you ask 100 organizations what's wrong with their organization, 100 of them will say communication is poor. And so I i think communication is relatively simple. I think it it is a matter of...
00:13:58
Speaker
being honest and being complete. I think typically when we communicate, we forget to ask the person if they heard what we said. and And so a lot of communication breaks down within minutes of starting. So the the the program starts about the art of communication, varying your message, being inspirational when necessary, but completing the circle of communication, finding out that people understood what you meant,
00:14:23
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um that they took your delegation and they followed through so that that that communication is not iffy or partial, that it's a complete circle every single time. The second is accountability.
00:14:38
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i I'm very, very fond of a book called Extreme Ownership written by two Navy SEALs. It's a very popular leadership book and I think one of the best ever written.
00:14:49
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um They explain accountability in an entirely different way than i than it had ever been explained to me. And that's simply because in the military, you're dealing with potential loss of life.
00:15:02
Speaker
So when you hold yourself accountable for anything that happens on your watch, including the loss of life, that's a level of accountability not many people have ever been taught or been prepared for. So we may not be dealing with loss of life in our daily activities, but if you're willing to view accountability from that standpoint, you learn to be really, really accountable. And the book says a leader is accountable for everything that happens on his watch.
00:15:32
Speaker
So in my case, in ah in a heating and cooling business, if a technician makes a mistake on a service call, I didn't make the mistake, but somewhere along the line, I didn't do something that prepared him for that interaction, whether it was training, whether it was he was the wrong person, whether I didn't train his manager well enough.
00:15:53
Speaker
If a leader will take that level of accountability, organizations can't help but get better. Another principle is proactivity versus reactivity. Leaders who are reactive let things happen to them.
00:16:07
Speaker
Leaders who are proactive make things happen. That's one of the fundamentals of leadership. um the the The difference between an emotional leader, an emotional decision maker and a non-emotional decision maker is a very stark contrast. And and that's one of those things that that kills leadership along with being a fearful leader.
00:16:29
Speaker
And then the last thing I would say is the quest for knowledge. I call it intellectual curiosity. And in general, leaders at a low level do not have a high degree of intellectual curiosity.
00:16:43
Speaker
a Going back to my technician example, a technician may be a great technician and he may study being a better technician, but he doesn't study leadership and he doesn't study management.
00:16:55
Speaker
um I was lucky to have been taught a long time ago that I needed to be pursuing knowledge every single day. And I i do that. I've done it now for more than 50 years.
00:17:06
Speaker
it I pursue knowledge on a a wide variety of topics. And if I'm going to be a leader, The more I know about people, the more I know about how they think, why they make the decisions they do, the more influential leader I become. So those are, that's a long answer, but those are the those are the elements of the of the leadership course that we taught.
Empowerment in Leadership: Personal Connections Matter
00:17:27
Speaker
One of the things that I'm sort of noticing from your list is that there isn't very much in the way of hard skills. It's all soft skills. I think that's true.
00:17:39
Speaker
i think I think leadership is an art, but I think it is an art that can be learned. I think you can define the the principles of communication, um you know the the principle of of proactivity. I think those things can be taught even though they're soft skills. but In a small business especially, it all begins with people.
00:18:02
Speaker
We empower our people. All of our people know that if they want to become leaders, if they want to become better at their job, we are an organization who will connect with them the way they want to be connected with, and we will we will pour resources into them. The empowerment of people is probably the greatest thing um engine for growth that I can think of.
00:18:28
Speaker
um it People stay in organizations that empower them. People rise to levels that they don't anticipate when when they are empowered. I just think it's a, I think people are the the whole key to this leadership deal.
00:18:42
Speaker
I agree with you. but I've spent my whole career in HR, but that word empowerment, what does that mean in the context of Tom Mechanical? I am a believer in connecting with people at the most basic level. I want to have a different relationship, frankly, with everyone in my life. but But since we're talking about employees, I don't want to go from desk to desk in the organization and ask them how their weekend went. I want to ask them about their oldest child and i and a competition that that I know they participated in that weekend because I asked them about it on Friday.
00:19:16
Speaker
I want to know the struggles that they're going through in their lives. I want to know what they'll allow me to know. I don't I don't ever push beyond that. But I will share with them if they're interested, I'll share with them struggles that I'm going through. They know things about my my family. they know They know about my grandkids and they celebrate my successes just like I celebrate theirs.
00:19:39
Speaker
I think that's at the heart of empowerment. So from what I would say, you've moved beyond the master-servant type workplace relationship to one that is more equal, but also I get the feeling that people respect each other and the the levels of responsibility that people have taken on.
00:20:03
Speaker
It's not a necessarily one of great mates, but there is a respect for the interest that you take in their life and the understanding of why they work, I suppose, as a result of that.
00:20:18
Speaker
Oh, i think you I think you said it very well. like you know They know that in in terms of position, we're not equals. But if they know Rich Ashton as a guy who is a loving grandfather, you know they can relate to that. and And when they see me outside the business, I'd better be acting the same way that I act in the business for them to understand that I'm ah i'm an ethical, transparent guy. That's that very powerful in a small organization.
00:20:49
Speaker
yes because at the end of the day you know in a smaller business i suspect that people might say that they're employed by an organization but they work for you they work for their leader there's that emotional connection You know, I learned a long time ago from one of my friends who owned a company, whenever he talked about his employees, he would introduce them as someone that he worked with, not that they worked for him. And it was a little thing, but I always make it a point that that we work together.
00:21:25
Speaker
Nobody works for anybody else. And I liked it when I saw him doing it, and and I've always admired that about him, so i tried to... I tried to to copy that for my own life. There's a lot of sense in that. I always say I work for me and my family. You might employ me, but I work for me and my family. That's my priority.
00:21:46
Speaker
Getting that together. We talked about you and your motivations for making all of this work. I'm wondering what sort of reaction you got from the people who were the ones that got involved. what what How did they feel? I kind of glossed over it, I think, but the part of the empowerment piece is getting them to a place they never imagined that they would that they would reach. So we have several people in the organization that never dreamed they'd be part of the the really executive team in a company. they they They saw themselves maybe as getting out of the field one day, but never making, participating in the critical decisions that keep the company moving forward. And so watching the pride that they take
00:22:31
Speaker
in actually making things happen. We have ah an employee that I often talk about who started with us 19 years ago. His goal was to make enough money over the summer to to go back to Mexico. 19 years later, he's one of the strongest voices on our leadership team. And and watching his growth over 19 years from someone who was at the bottom rung of the company to one who is now a part of the the team that makes things happen every day,
00:22:58
Speaker
ah It's shocking to him, but it's also learning how to be a leader has made him a leader in his family, made him a better parent, made him a better husband. And and he'd be the first one to tell you all of that. So they've they have those that have succeeded have just been surprised, really, about how far they've come.
00:23:17
Speaker
Yes. It sounds a little bit as if one of the things that you're doing is allowing people to realize their potential, potential that they might not have realized that they actually had.
00:23:30
Speaker
Exactly right. Yeah. Sometimes it falls to employers to do that because other parts of society education, it says you can pass this exam you can't pass this exam, but what you're doing is looking at the potential of the individual, their soft skills as well as their hard skills and actually, in discussion with them, I get the feeling.
00:23:50
Speaker
you're agreeing that they have both the potential and the interest and motivation to make this happen. Yeah, when we start this with somebody, they they don't have a clear idea of what being a leader, being a manager really means. And so, you know, we have to we have to introduce them to that because there's there's a level of accountability for a manager that most people don't understand. They kind of think it works the other way. They kind of think that the manager holds everybody accountable. But the reality is, is that the higher you go in an organization, the more accountability there is for you because there's more people depending on you.
00:24:28
Speaker
And that's one of the fundamentals that that I didn't realize until I started teaching people.
From Blogs to Book: The Genesis of 'Growing Your Own'
00:24:34
Speaker
And and it's I mean, it truly is fundamental to the program. Yes. And you've documented the experience that you've had and how you made it all work and some of the challenges in this book, Growing Your Own.
00:24:47
Speaker
Yeah, the the the book came up. The book was an accident. During the course of the training, I began writing a blog to the to the people on the leadership team every other week.
00:24:58
Speaker
And my idea was they weren't talking about these leadership principles. And I wanted them to begin having casual conversations with them around the water cooler or the coffee pot. And it wasn't happening.
00:25:09
Speaker
and And so our general manager said, i think if we have them read the blog in the leadership meeting or in the management meetings biweekly, I think that they will begin to understand it. And and he was he was dead right.
00:25:23
Speaker
As they read the blogs together, they began holding each other accountable to the principles. Well, after two years, i had written 52 blogs. And I decided that it probably was worthy of being in a book, if for no other reason than just a legacy project when when I retired.
00:25:41
Speaker
um But I published it as ah as a thirty five chapter book. The chapters are two and a half pages long on average. So it's very digestible information. It is it is presented in a way that low level leaders learn.
00:25:57
Speaker
And it happens to be the way I learned to little bits at a time. And and and so it it has wound up being a desktop reference for the employees. And then as I hand it out to friends and and as I sell them, people get back to me and say, you know, I've been a leader. I've been a I've been a business owner for 30 years. And the book reminded me of things that I quit doing a while back and I need to start doing them again. So it's it's actually been accepted at various levels of leadership. And that was a little bit of an and little little unexpected. But the book was an accident. I didn't I didn't sit down and write the book from scratch. It came out of the training that you delivered.
00:26:35
Speaker
And it sounds a little bit as if what you've tried to do is not create a formal training program with classrooms as such, but make the learning available where people need it and in situations that they wouldn't necessarily expect to discover something new but you've made it very accessible and yeah i'm totally in awe of what you've done to be honest rich it sounds like you've been built a successful business you've noticed and i've recognized acknowledged that the success of that business is in no small part down to the people that you've got working with you and you've realized
00:27:16
Speaker
I think that the best people to run your business when you retire are the people who care most about it. And those are the people that helped you build it. And it sounds like you've been very successful at it. And congratulations.
00:27:28
Speaker
And congratulations to the people who run the course and are now running your business for you. It's it's brilliant. Thank you very much. Well, thank you. that That really is a great summary. of that and I couldn't have said it any better. So thank you. Thank you for summing it up that way. Before we started, you said i said to you, I'm going to thank you at the end for being a very interesting guest. And you said, oh, how do you know I'm going to be interesting?
00:27:51
Speaker
I doubt anybody would not be interested in hearing the story about how you built your business and transpired. leadership of it to the people who now helped you grow it. So I'm very grateful for giving me the opportunity to hear about it in this conversation. Thank you very much.
00:28:07
Speaker
Well, you're very kind. I've enjoyed the conversation. Thank you. I am Michael Millward, the Managing Director of Abbasida, and I have been having a conversation with the independent mind, Rich Ashton, the author of Growing Your Own.
00:28:22
Speaker
You can find out more about both of us by using the links in the description.
00:28:28
Speaker
I am sure you will have enjoyed listening to this episode of The Independent Minds as much as Rich and i have enjoyed making it. So please give it a like and download it so you can listen anytime, anywhere.
00:28:40
Speaker
To make sure that you don't miss out on future episodes, please subscribe. You'll probably also want to share the link with your family, friends and work colleagues. Remember, the aim of all the podcasts produced by Abbasida is not to tell you what to think, but we do hope to have made you think.
00:28:56
Speaker
Until the next episode of The Independent Minds, thank you for listening and goodbye.