Autobiography - The End is Near

The termination of John Wolf with extreme prejudice resulted with me running the industrial business for several months. I was the VP of Industrial marketing and national sales manager. I wanted to run the entire business. A nation wide search was underway to find the next John Wolf. I was reporting directly to Mike Tellor. I was building the business and hiring more staff. I hired a marketing manager Scott Cross. I am sure his former boss got down on his knees and thanked the lord for his deliverance. I used the top head hunter in the paint business Nicola James to find him. The first red flag was he failed his drug test. He drank so much water that his drug test was diluted. He took it a second time and passed. He was a huge alcoholic and who knows what else. This worked in his favor when we hired the new VP of Sales. I kept Scott on a short leash and got some good productivity out of him. He had a new lie for every time he came to work late. I was convinced he kept a list handy of what lie to tell on what day.

Eventually a new sales manager was hired. I had interviewed him and gave him good marks. He came from the packaging industry. He sold plastic wrapping machines for meat packers. John Kavanagh was a strategic thinker that could not quite figure out the uniqueness of the industrial business or the Rust-Oleum culture. Scott Cross saw him as his meal ticket to success which was to get my job. Scott and John bonded over their love of liquor and spent hours behind closed doors together. I could not get a meeting with John because he and Scott were inseparable. I had survived bizarre situations many times before. Sometimes you have to know when to fold ‘em. John and Scott created a frenzy for “off with my head.” My guardian angel Tom Reed came to my rescue. Tom was the Vice President reporting to Mike Tellor. The HR department had joined in the frenzy. They wanted to conduct a 360° review which means everyone that reports to me gets to chime in. I had my fan club but John and Scott had coached a group of assassins. At that precise moment in time the Vice President of International resigned. Daryl Wright was a hand picked boy by Mike Tellor. He ran the international business for two years and created a top management position for himself with our distributor in Australia called DyMark. Daryl resigned and Tom Reed asked me if I would prefer to proceed with the 360° review or transfer and run the international business again. Um. Um. OK I’ll transfer. My children were in college and Priscilla was ready to travel the world with me.

The final 10 years of my career were pure magic. I have told everyone that will listen that I could not be more grateful for John and Scott’s assassination attempt. I dodged that bullet and landed on the pot of gold. Believe it or don’t it was decided that I should report to John Kavanagh in my new role in the international business. He completely left me alone except for creating a bonus program that was a license to steal. I made so much money in my final years at RO that I could not believe it. I was making an annual bonus that was 200% to 300% of my base salary. I never missed. Every time I received a check that could pay off the national debt I would tell Priscilla that someday this will end. It never did until I retired.

Within a few months John Kavanagh realized that his decision to promote Scott Cross was a horror. Scott was launched. Secondly John could never fit in with the RO management team. They never accepted him as an equal. He was a lonely, lonely boy. His next door neighbor in Arlington Heights, Terry Horan had been the VP of RO consumer marketing. Terry introduced John to RO. Terry resigned and went to work at Bausch. Then Terry hired John to run the Dremel business at Bausch. Fare thee well John Kavanagh.

It is 2011, as I am nearing the end of my career, I am given a new boss who will take over the international business when I retire. Kurt Hardy was a reject from the consumer business. He was not a player with the consumer group top management Bill Spaulding and Ed Vorhees. They wanted their buddy Jim Stinner to be the VP of consumer marketing. Kurt was a man without a job so Tom Reed gave him my job. It worked out great. I could say that Kurt could spend money like a drunken sailor but that would be unfair to the sailors.

I ran a lean business and made a lot of money for RO. Kurt created a a monster that eventually consumed him. At this point in my career I was Teflon. Our holding company RPM had a proviso that allowed any employee with 40 years or more of service to retire with full pension no matter their age. Whoever was in HR in 1974 gave me an employee start date six months earlier than actual. They must have included my time as a Co-op college student. I could have retired in March 2014 at age 63 with a full pension. At that point in my career nothing could hurt me. Kurt started to carve away at my business. He first relived me of central and South America. I thought about how I should react. I could complain or quit in protest. I feigned disappointment so he wouldn’t think it was too easy to keep taking my territory. On the other hand my bonus was based on percentage increase. The smaller my territory, the easier it was to exceed my sales goal and earn that obscenely high bonus. Next I lost Australia/ New Zealand. I missed working with the people because I had just acquired a paint manufacturer HiChem in Brisbane. Now I had a narrower focus on Africa, Middle East, Russia and Asia. Still a nice piece of real estate. I acquired a paint company called Spraymate in Johannesburg. These were the best of times. I would approach old guys my age that owned paint companies. I would ask them if they had any hobbies. They would say I like hunting, fishing, golfing and flying airplanes. I would say how large a check do I have to write you so you can follow your passions.

Next I lost the Middle East and Africa but I still had Russia and Asia. That served me well to the end of my career. The good thing that came out of losing South Africa that it made me angry enough to retire. I had arranged a trip to South Africa with Priscilla. Kurt pulled the plug two weeks before our trip. I suggested we would just be tourists and not visit our associates. Kurt asked Steve Gillmann the VP of HR his opinion. Priscilla and I switched our itinerary from South Africa to Key West. We had just bought a 45’ express cruiser to circumnavigate America’s Great Loop. The plan was to retire in 2016 and go on a one year boat ride around the eastern US. I decided to retire a year earlier. I had not announced my intentions until I was at a roof top bar in Hong Kong with the President of RO Tom Reed. Tom took over as President when Mike Tellor retired. We were on a business trip with our wives. Priscilla and Kathy Reed got along really well. Tom asked me how old I was. He said he would be retired before he was as old as me. Then I revealed I would retire soon. The only thing holding me back was the cost of health insurance. I was 63 and would not be eligible for Medicare until I was 65. He asked me if I would have any interest in earning money while I was retired. I said yes. He said I will hire you as a sales consultant and pay you a commission and pay for your health insurance. Who could say no. I kept my customer in Russia while I was on the Loop. I continued to grow the Russian business and made two trips there. One of the trips was with Tom. When Tom retired my consultant program ended. It was a good run all the way.