Darcy Curran, CEO, Highline Warren

Behzad Rassuli: 0:14

Welcome to Auto Care on Air, a candid podcast for a curious industry. I'm Bezad Rasulli, Senior Vice President of Strategic Development at the Auto Care Association, and this is the Driver's Seat, where we embark on insightful, one-on-one conversations with leaders steering the companies that are shaping tomorrow's landscape. Darcy Curran, CEO of Highline Warren. Thank you so much for sitting down with me today. Absolutely. Glad you're here. I really appreciate it. If you don't mind, maybe we can start with just Highline Warren in general. What is Highline Warren? How long has it been around? And if you can go back a little bit in time, I know as we're entering your office here, there's a bit of a history wall that goes back to the early 1900s, and I certainly was surprised by that. So maybe start a little bit of the history and talk, uh, bring us up to speed with what Highline Warren's doing.

Darcy Curran: 1:02

Sure. So the Warren side of Highline Warren was started over a hundred years ago by Bob Schlott's grand grandfather. Bob Schlott ran it before him, his father, before him, his grandfather, over a hundred-year-old, family-owned business, um blending oil, among other things, but blending, blending oil, um, and big distributors for that. Uh the Highline side of Highline Warren also dates back over a hundred years, with Levin's supply being the oldest part of it in the Sacramento-San Francisco area. But but Highline side was created in 2016 by a private equity company called Sterling Group out of Houston, Texas. They put two companies together, but those two companies were actually each four companies, sort of loosely affiliated, quasi-competitors, um, with a national footprint of primarily distribution. And they wanted to create one company that did distribution in the automotive aftermarket coast to coast. So they brought me in, they bought these two companies, which were really eight companies, brought me in in 2016 to run that. We bought seven more companies in the next four years, took those 15 companies, created a national footprint of again primarily distribution with a little bit of blending and filling. Um, and then in 2020, um, Pritzgrove Private Capital, on the same day, November 9th, 2020, bought Warren Distribution from Bob Schlott, bought Highline Aftermarket from Sterling Group, and combined the two companies. So we go back, much of the company goes back over a hundred years. Um one of them, half the company was one culture, one really successful company run by one family for a hundred years. The other side is 15 companies put together in a in a period of four and a half years, all successful, all with good cultures, and all doing similar things. And our mandate was to build a management team, put it all together, create a national footprint of distribution with vertical integration in the in sort of we as we think about it, um, we are the leading solution partner um with vertical integration of maintenance consumables. And all those words are very significant to what we do. And as we think about it, so so solutions partner, um, that's important because we don't just we're not we're not just excited to sell another gallon of this or another widget there. Where where we think what makes us different is we partner, whether it's a customer or a vendor, to to help them run their business better, um, not just sell another another pallet or another truckload, but how to what are some things that they're tackling in their business that we could do better for them? Um, and vertically integrated, so we we are unique in that we've got a national footprint of our own distribution centers and our own manufacturing plants, and that's pretty unique. A lot of times people will have manufacturing but not distribution. A lot of times they'll have distribution but not manufacturing, and a lot of times they'll have regional um footprints, but not a big national footprint. And then maintenance consumables, we talk about that because we don't do hard parts. Um, when we start doing hard parts, we start competing with a lot of our customers. Think about everything your car uses as you're driving down the road and you need to maintain that. That's where we play. Usually heavy, inexpensive, low margin, not easy to move around products. That's where we play.

Behzad Rassuli: 4:36

So uh that I understand that. Uh, but I wonder if you could be a little bit more specific about what when you say vertically integrated manufacturing and distributing, I get the heavy bottles, right? I mean, we're looking at a couple behind us here. There's a big Ranex jug, and I'm sure when you uh are distributing those at scale, not everybody wants to do that, and not ever everyone can do it profitably. But Ranex doesn't say Highline Warren on it, does it? So what what do you when you're manufacturing products or this when you described it as blending oil, can you what does that actually make?

Darcy Curran: 5:14

Yeah, so so primarily what we make, we we we make over, we produce over 200 million gallons a year of liquids. We typically blow mold the bottle, we blend what's going in it, we fill it, we put it on a palette, we do it. You make the bottle and the fluid. Is that typical? Um again, it goes back to vertical integration. Vertical integration. So if you do that, if you if you make the investment and do that, you control all processes of the manufacturing. You're not spending more buying bottles from other people. And for us, if we're going to if if we're going to vertically integrate, we're going to make sure we do it all the way down the line so that we get the savings everywhere. So we we we can become the low-cost private label supplier for all these people. So so very few products, nothing we make says Highline Lauren on it. Um of the 200 and something million gallons we make, you know, 200 million gallons of it is in someone else's name, and you'd never know it was us.

Behzad Rassuli: 6:09

I actually I picked up on that in the lobby. There's a there are a couple magazine articles that say, you know, the billion-dollar company that nobody's ever heard of, and the two billion dollar, almost two billion dollar company that nobody's ever heard of. Uh and I was I was confused by that because there's a big sign that says Highline Warren on the outside in this building. Uh, but yet it was almost a point of pride in those articles that nobody's ever heard of you.

Darcy Curran: 6:31

Yeah. So so as we think about it, we think about our partnerships, right? We we want to make our partners better. Um, we don't care. If they win, we win. We don't have to have our name all over the products or anything. So when we decide to partner, one of the things when we first started putting the companies together, we might have, you know, we might represent seven or eight or nine different manufacturers on something. I'd rather be more significant to fewer manufacturers. Um when times get tough, I want them to know that we are with them and they're they're number one, two, or three in our world. I want to be number one, two, or three in their world. And I want to help them succeed. And if they grow, then we're gonna grow. If we if we make a hundred percent of your wash or deaf or RV antifreeze or or or lubricants, if you win, we win.

Behzad Rassuli: 7:18

I don't need my name all over that. Yeah. That makes sense. And uh when I think about this combination that you've described, uh run by private equity, bringing what was it like seven businesses together and then merging that with another business. Thinking about your background, did you come from like the bottle-blowing business or the fluid mixing business?

Darcy Curran: 7:40

How did you get why is this your I've only had one job before this? So I worked for 30 years for a company called Ferguson Enterprises that's a plumbing business. Plumbing. Yeah. So I started July 13th, 1987, right out of college. I was an English major with a concentration in 20th century British poetry, so thoroughly unemployable. And I was uh Ferguson, Ferguson hired and still hires a whole lot of trainees every year, and they had a trainee program. Uh my two roommates from college had moved up to the DC area. They were a year ahead of me. I was gonna go up there, live with them for a couple years, take a job, any job, and then go back to law school. And I started on with Ferguson, and they were in 87 they were about $300 million, and today they're $33 billion, and it's a distribution company. Um they they uh they do they don't manufacture things, they are a distribution company. And they we while I was there, we grew from 300 million to 22 or 23 billion, and they just they they yeah, they decided they were going to be world-class at distribution. So I I got to go to school on what does it mean to be a really world-class distribution business? And when you think about distribution, there's not there's not much difference. It doesn't matter much what's in the box. The the fundamentals are pretty much the same. Um, so when I when I was with Ferguson, uh my last job was was up in Canada and Toronto area, and I decided to leave, I looked for a job in private equity that was a distribution company, and the fundamentals are going to be the same. Um, they're not that many of them. It's not a complicated business. No one's calling us to build a rocket. We buy truckloads of stuff, we break bulk, we we ship it out in smaller quantities. That's half our business. The other half was the blending and filling, even though I didn't have a lot of experience in that, we had people in the company who are who have been doing it for 33, 34 years, and I could learn it.

Behzad Rassuli: 9:34

Yeah. I mean, you say that all very fluently now, and I just think about uh the Darcy that took that job at Ferguson hearing what you just said and trying to make sense of it. You know, it's not that complicated. We break bulk, we do this. Do you think Darcy uh in was it 1987 you said? 87. I mean, there's a there's a uh picture frame on the wall over here that says, I think it says Ferguson on it.

Darcy Curran: 10:00

It's my offer letter, my original offer letter from I was a senior in college from May of 1987, making $19,000 a year, working 70 hours a week, and next year I got two vacation days. Couldn't sign it fast enough.

Behzad Rassuli: 10:13

And that Darcy Curran could understand uh what you just said is that.

Darcy Curran: 10:17

Yeah, I think that's it, it's all an evolution, right? So I again I I took the job honestly thinking I'm just gonna do something for two years and go to law school. And then um Ferguson, at the time we I started outside of DC, you know, that was one of 10 trainees they hired that year, and we come in and and they they start your first year, your first 12 months, you were in a warehouse, uh loading and unloading trucks, driving forklifts, making deliveries, understanding the business from the ground up, which is the best way to learn any business. Yeah. And so um spent a whole year doing that and then started progressing through. And uh, in the meantime, I was studying for LSATS at night. I took an accounting class because I had never taken an accounting class and I decided that I if I'm gonna be in business for a bit, I probably should should should learn a little bit about accounting. Um You did it for Ferguson.

Behzad Rassuli: 11:03

You just just because you're not gonna be able to do it.

Darcy Curran: 11:04

I just did it because I just yeah, I just never if I was going to be in business, I avoided I avoided accounting, um, anything accounting all through college. Yeah. Um, you know, give me medieval poetry, I'll take it. But but not accounting one-on-one was. Yeah. And so so as I worked longer at Ferguson, I realized I really enjoyed business. And the structure they had was um you work your way through inside sales and outside sales, and you go, you know, you get a small branch you can run. First branch was in Gainesville, Virginia, it was four people. Um so you're you're you're running a little small business, you've got bumpers, you've got training wheels on because there's a great process to make sure you don't screw it up, but you got to learn business. And I found that I really enjoyed that. And all my friends who had gone to law school or were going to law school, they had lots of debt and they didn't like it that much. And I thought, well, let me defer, let me defer um law school for another couple years and keep trying this. And, you know, and I just I kept finding um that there was nothing I felt like I was missing from my career when I worked there. And 30 years later, it's the best experience I ever got. I'd highly recommend it. Um still very close to Mr. Peebles, who started the company just past this year. I still I talked to him up until a handful of months before he passed. That's amazing. And all the all the people I worked with and worked for there are still significant people in my life.

Behzad Rassuli: 12:30

Did you uh so you just mentioned this game, the Gainesville uh branch? That you you you ran that? Yeah, so uh yeah, 1989, August of 89, open. Okay, so two years into working at Ferguson, they just said, Hey, Darcy Lascio, run this branch?

Darcy Curran: 12:44

No, nothing like that. So so in those days, uh a new branch um wouldn't make money for a couple years. And you'd typically take a salesperson, an outside salesperson off the road who made a lot of money, and you'd put them in there and they would uh you know, they'd they'd they'd work, but but you'd take a high-dollar salesperson off the road and you'd put them in a location that wasn't gonna make money for a couple years. And I was pretty ambitious. So I went to my boss at the time and I said, Listen, you're paying me like $23,000. I've got something to prove. This place isn't gonna make money anyway. Let me get in there, let me work really hard. I was single. I wanted some, you know, wanted to prove myself. Um, so I said, you know, pay me half of what you're gonna pay someone you take off the road. I'll work my tail off because for me, it allowed me to get a leg up. I got to learn a lot. I got a leg up on the other nine trainees who started with me. And so that's when I that's when I took the accounting class because I figured I need to learn this. Took it at night. So so I convinced my boss at the time, turn this over to me. Uh, let me let me have it for a couple years and see if we see if it can't go well.

Behzad Rassuli: 13:49

Did you think you'd fail at any point?

Darcy Curran: 13:52

No, I mean you could assume you could figure it out. I mean, again, it's it's it's not a complicated business. There's a handful of fundamentals, right? If you're if you're running a distribution company, you have to source really well. You've got to buy product really well. You've got to be really good at freight moving product around, you've got to be really good at the components of of warehousing, and you've got to be really good at pricing. Outside of that, most things don't matter that much. If you're if you don't source it well, you're not gonna win. If you don't move it around efficiently and cost effectively, you're not gonna win. Um, and if you don't price it right, because everything we sold at Ferguson, 50% of what we sell here at Highline Warren, other people sell it.

Behzad Rassuli: 14:33

I'm gonna stick on this this time period just for a little bit. But when you think back to that time, was there maybe a mentor or somebody that kind of showed you the ropes or kind of helped you develop lanes or I could I could list 50, honestly, 50.

Darcy Curran: 14:46

Um Ferguson, so every year, so we were bringing in 1,500 kids a year out of college at at sort of pre-2008. Um everybody's going through the process, everybody's you know, it it was it's a very collegial atmosphere. Um I I could name honestly, I'm not kidding, I could name 30 or 40 people that were significant in my development in business, personally, professionally. Um they're they're people I still talk to today, people I've spoken to in the last 24 hours that I haven't worked with or for in 20 years. Yeah. Because because what happens is you create this culture. I'm a I'm a strong believer in culture. Culture, you know, culture wins every single day. Um and they created such a culture there that it's it it it supersedes just business, it extends past people retire, people move on to new companies, and still these relationships are significant in your life. And uh that's the power of culture.

Behzad Rassuli: 15:48

Uh we're gonna we're gonna spend a bit of time on culture because it I've spent a couple hours with you, maybe more than that, over the past few days, and it's almost every other sentence that the word culture shows up, and it's all around the office. So we're gonna spend some time on that. But I wanna make sure that um I don't skip over kind of the how Darcy became the CEO that is uh aware of and invested in culture. What were the lessons on the way? Who were the people that showed him the rope? So I want to spend a little bit of time in that area. You you talked about, you know, the the ability to kind of say right now I could name 40 or 50 people that helped mentor me, but you were the one that raised your hand that said, I will I will lead that, uh, I'll take the risk here, you know, put the bet on me. Um, where do you think that came from? Where do you think that kind of like need to prove something or that belief in yourself or that drive to you know punt law school and take take this gamble? Where do you think that came from? I mean, I don't know. It's probably too deep for me.

Darcy Curran: 16:51

Um, you know, listen, I'm I'm the youngest of 10 kids in a crowded house with 10 kids in 14 years. 10 kids. I'm the tenth of 10 kids. They finally got it right after after nine tries, they finally got it right.

Behzad Rassuli: 17:03

Well, I mean, one thing I think about is like there's the there's the I know there's you know first child uh characteristics, right? And then there's like the middle child. I'm a middle child, so I've heard these like, oh, you're not the firstborn, you're the middle child. I do not know what the character characteristics of a tenth child are.

Darcy Curran: 17:23

Like spoiled. First, first would be spoiled. Uh yeah, it's funny. So we're all within 14 years. Um, we're still all very close today. We probably if I counted the number of texts, we have a text chain, just the siblings, none of our spouses, none of our kids. And I I guarantee you we've texted each other more than 10 times today already. Um so I think a really close-knit family. Um, I think when you're in a crowded family, you uh you you you have to figure, I guess you figure out how to raise your hand and get noticed and all that. So I think probably part of it. And I I just think, you know, I've always you know played played a lot of sports growing up, a lot of team sports growing up. I'm a strong believer in in the competitiveness and the camaraderie that comes with team sports. And I think when I when I started working, I thought, I thought, okay, well, if this is what I'm gonna do, I'm gonna think about the long run and I'm gonna figure out how what what do I need in my skill set in order to succeed at this. And when I got to, so I got to Gainesville, Virginia, I was two years out of college, and had this sort of a kind of a crusty old plumber, Candy Lowe from Warrington, Virginia, and he came in and he said, you know, we got to know him, and he said, You can't service me because you don't know anything. And he said, I'm not gonna buy my stuff from you because what do you know? And I said, Well, teach me. So Candy and I came up with an agreement where every Saturday I would go work in Warrington, Virginia with him, and he wouldn't pay me, but he'd buy me breakfast and lunch, and I thought, hey, I'm making $19,000 a year. That's a good deal. And so part of it for me was um building a relationship with somebody that I thought was going to be a significant customer, right? Gain gaining gaining credibility with him, gaining trust with him, creating a relationship, and at the same time learning about the industry, learning about the the fundamentals of running a small business because he was a small businessman. Um and Kenny and I developed this really strong relationship. He taught me things, he taught me lessons that you're not gonna learn in school and you're not gonna learn in a trainee class, things like he would go change out a water heater in a really remote area of Virginia, and he'd go to the supply house in the morning and he'd buy his products and he'd drive out to there. And if somebody, if you pulled something wrong and he's in the middle of nowhere, Virginia, he doesn't install a water heater that day. Those people don't have those people don't have hot water, and he didn't make any money today. And some dumb 20-year-old kid doesn't realize the impact that they have on that. So he taught me a whole lot about honestly about life, about business, about relationships and all that. So there's a lot of those, a lot of those small things that that lasted a summer, probably. I don't know how I don't even know how long that lasted, but it taught me a whole lot. Um years later, I moved back to that DC area and I was running the DC area, Washington, Baltimore for for Ferguson. And the first person I I went back the day I got there, the first person I had lunch with was Kenny Lowe. Was he willing to buy stuff from me this time? No, I had to pay this. Well, he bought stuff, but I had to pay by lunch this time.

Behzad Rassuli: 20:29

Well, the I mean you you kind of brushed through this moment, but a lot of people will take would take Kenny's comment as just outright rejection. I'm not buying anything from you, but you kind of just let it roll off your roll off your sleeve and you said, well, just teach me. Yeah, exactly. Right. So I mean, there's some ingredient there of this, you know, when you see an obstacle or some kind of challenge, you're just you just naturally seem to go through it. Uh, I don't know if it, you know, is something that because you're the 10th kid and you just you you otherwise you're gonna get ignored and you're not gonna like you know get you're gonna get left out of the car on the family trip if you don't just make sure you get known or aware. But um uh maybe it's sports. I don't know. You said you play sports, what sports did you play? Yeah, I played soccer um all through it, including college.

Darcy Curran: 21:17

Oh, wow. Yeah, you played soccer in college. Where'd you go to college? Yeah, College of William and Mary, the second oldest university in the country, the alma mater of a nation. Thomas Jefferson and I went there. He didn't play soccer, but I did. Thomas Jefferson.

Behzad Rassuli: 21:28

Oh, that's right.

Darcy Curran: 21:28

William Mary is very well known for a lot of a lot of people came out of William Mary, right?

Behzad Rassuli: 21:32

Yeah, sure, sure.

Darcy Curran: 21:33

And um, so we were division, we are division one soccer team. I played, I went there to play soccer, um and uh finished in '87.

Behzad Rassuli: 21:41

Who else came out of William Mary? Um there were a number of government officials that came out of there, right?

Darcy Curran: 21:46

Oh, yeah. So we s we secretly, it's it's interesting. So I'm on the board of trustees now, the foundation board there now. And one of the things we're working on is how how do we get the name of William and Mary? How do we get our our preeminence that we deserve? Um, because we're we we're quietly behind the scenes running a whole lot of things, and but not not as visible, right? So so early presidents, some early presidents went there. One of the first presidents of William and Mary was not first, but one of the presidents of William Mary was Tom was uh George Washington. Thomas Jefferson went there, John Tyler went there. Um, so the it's a great school that produces it's small liberal arts state school in Virginia, it's got about 6,000 students there. I went there, my wife went there, my son went there, undergrad and grad school, and I joined the foundation board a year and a half ago. Any notable people on your soccer team? Yeah, our center forward was John Stewart. You know, the comedian John Stewart. Yeah, he was our center forward, and um and when we rode in our little white vans to go to games, he always wanted to be in his van because it was going to be fun. Yeah. Um he's funny then too. Funny then, funny now, hasn't changed a bit. We had a 40th reunion last year of my freshman team. He came back and hung out with all the guys. When our coach retired, he came back and you know, we roasted him and all that kind of stuff. When he gosh, when he was uh years ago, when he did a show from DC for a week or two, he interviewed Obama and he he he reserved four or five slots in the front row for some of us to come back and sit there. He hasn't changed a bit. Um he's exactly who you think he is. What you see on TV is exactly him, and he hasn't changed a bit. But it was a lot of fun.

Behzad Rassuli: 23:29

You seem to really keep in touch with um uh I mean everyone from your past. So you your uh alma mater, your um family, you know, the people that you would define as role models and mentors back at the back at Ferguson. What where does that I mean I know that personally in our family, you know, I I probably don't do that naturally, but I know that my mom instilled that in us. She was like, you cannot like not talk to your siblings. Yeah, you know, and she would send me a personal text every day to re-send somebody else a text about their birthday or something like that. Did your parents push that onto you or did it remind you of that, or was it just something you do naturally?

Darcy Curran: 24:10

I I give I give like all credit to everything to my mom. Um so when I was 14, my dad passed away. He was 59 years old, um, had a heart attack, passed away. Um I'm so sorry. Yeah, and my mom lived to 99. So she was 52, she lived till 99, very healthy till 99. Um, her birthday's Christmas day. Um she kept us all very close. We're always I said we go, we go, I don't go, I don't go a day without texting half a dozen of my siblings. Um so I think I think interpersonal relationships and connections have always just been there. Um I just it's just I don't I don't I I don't know why I didn't decide to do that. I read a book recently called The Good Life, and it's really interesting. Uh Harvard University did the study in the 1950s, they started it. It's on what makes people happy, what creates happiness in people's lives. And they got these these indigent people from downtown Boston, and they got uh a set of them and a set of uh privileged Harvard kids in the 1950s, and they studied what creates happiness in their lives, and they did it over 70 years. Um, so multi-generations of these families ended up being thousands of people. And at the end of the day, what they realized is um once you have enough money to not worry about paying your bills, incremental money doesn't add incremental happiness. What the people who were happiest, and it ended up being thousands of people over 70 years, are people with strong interpersonal relationships with their family and their and their friends. And I I would say I I came to that book late. It just affirmed what how I lived and how I was brought up. Um so um, you know, one of the things in there was I'm a 60-year-old man in America, you're gonna live till 80 years old, you're gonna be dead in 20 years. Think about people that add joy to your life. Um, and I picked some guys from my soccer team in college, and how many days a year do you see them? And it was three, maybe four. And it said, do the math, you're gonna be dead in 20 years. Are you happy with that number? And if not, change it.

Behzad Rassuli: 26:11

Oh my god.

Darcy Curran: 26:12

And and so we now we get together every year now, our seven of us from college and spend a long weekend making fun of each other's hairlines and belt lines and all that kind of stuff, and and it matters. And then now I do it with our high uh this six or seven guys from high school that we do it with, and it was already there with my family. So I just think I think the power of connections, of, of, of, of relationships, and we talk about you know, our tagline for Highline Warren is people powered performance. I think the power of those connections and relationships can beat everything.

Behzad Rassuli: 26:44

Those are also the name of your conference rooms, right? Yeah, yeah. So all of our conference rooms are named after. We're gonna get back to that culture thing. Um the what you just talked about reminded me there's a guy named Tim Urban. He has a blog uh called Wait But Why. Super fascinating. I mean, just goes long form really deep into topics. And one of the blogs that I think it was maybe even my intro to his blogs was he showed how through blocks of time, you know, years or months or days, you can literally reduce your entire life, assuming you live to you said 80, call it 90, to one page, one piece of paper in just blocks. And he goes through all these different exercises where he says, like, this is all of your time with your family pre pre-18, right? It's all these days, and then if you map that out, you see your parents once every other weekend or something like that, um, or once a month for literally the rest of your life. That's like 20 times. Are you okay seeing your parents 20 more times for the rest of your life? If not, change it. Change it, right? Change it. Um, it was one of the most impactful things that I've ever read. And it it makes me take an extra second with everything I do. I mean, whenever I'm leaving a room or something and I want to say, like, you know, I forgot to say thank you or for something like that. I'll say maybe, you know, just it re-orient reoriented me to say, okay, maybe I won't have this opportunity again. I'm gonna go back in that room, I'm gonna say thank you.

Darcy Curran: 28:15

And I think like that, I think that comes, I I give again, I give credit there to my mom. Um and and and my dad, my again, I was only I would tell you, my dad died at 14 when I was 14. Uh, I would rather have had my dad for 14 years than most people's dads for an entire life, because he figured out a way to have 10 kids. And for the brief period of time we were all there, we all had our special moments with him. We all felt like he was we were their favor we were his favorite in some way, and uh interesting story. So he initially had a heart attack and was in the hospital. I was uh I was again 14. Um, and while he was in the hospital recovering, he ended up having another heart attack and passing later. But in in the hospital, I had a soccer game at a high school next to the hospital, and he had my mom on a Thursday afternoon sneak him clothes in. He changed out of his gown, got in the car with her, drove over to the high school that was next to the hospital, watched my soccer game, came back, put his robe on, was back for dinner, and didn't tell the hospital that he did that.

Behzad Rassuli: 29:22

Wait, wait, this is after he had a heart attack.

Darcy Curran: 29:24

He was recovering from a heart attack in the hospital. And he left my mom smuggle him in clothes, changed his clothes, went and watched the soccer game, was back by dinner in the hospital. Didn't know it. And that kind of gesture um mattered. It sticks with you, right? It sticks with you. So the relationships that you have, so it starts with family for me. It starts with family, it's my siblings, it's my mom, um my dad. Um, it starts there, and and and I've tried to carry that to my family. Um, but also you see the the strength of those relationships. And you think about work and you think about we can they're not gonna be that strong at work, but we can have a different relationship, a different structure with the people you work with and for and beside and all that. And those kinds of bonds are gonna win the day every time. When push comes to shove, if you're going to battle with your team and you people truly know each other and care about each other and treat each other with respect and give each other room to grow and to be fallible and all those things, you're gonna win. You're just gonna win. All things being equal, people buy from people they trust and like. All things not being equal, they still find a way to buy from people that they like and trust.

Behzad Rassuli: 30:41

I don't, I don't I don't want to map this connection if it's not there, but just because sequentially we're talking about it, I can't help but connect your dad making that effort to come and watch you play soccer so you felt seen to the way uh the culture you have created here at Highline, and just visually, just walking through the halls the week of Halloween. The week of Halloween. I mean, that's a completely different story. This is more like a Halloween store than than a normal office. But the conference rooms, first of all, you made a point to walk me around this office to show me every door, every room, every person, whether or not they were here. You said, This is this person's office, this is who they are, this is what they do, this is where they came from, this is how I hired them. I remember what we had for dinner. Very thorough and very intentional. But also the conference rooms uh are named after your kind of values and the pictures around the office. Maybe you can fill in the rest of this.

Darcy Curran: 31:48

Yeah. So we moved over to this building a couple of years ago, moved to our new headquarters, and and I had several rules, right? I wanted the, I wanted the building to be a manifestation of who we are and what we stand for. And so what my my first rule was there's no picture in this building that is not of our people or our buildings or our people at work in their buildings. So um, and I wanted the the conference rooms, you know, instead of being conference room A, B, C, D, I wanted them to reflect our values. So it's partnerships, it's it's people, it's power, it's performance. Um and so in our partnership room over there, so we make a lot of private label products. We make over a hundred private label brands for other people. Um so our partnership room, there's a there's a a wall that's full of all the products we make for other people, just to remind us of we get up every single day and we go to work to make those people successful. Um our people room, well, obviously, our people, our main, our main conference room is our people room. And every single picture in this building is of our people at work. Um and again, it's just we've got the timeline right here on the wall that goes from goes over a hundred years to remind us of the history of where we came from. We've got these huge pictures of of one of our locations in San Francisco in 1933, and we've got a company picnic from 1939, a huge poster on the wall framed from a company picnic. I you want to walk around the place and feel like you want to feel what you're trying to build. So we're we're really lucky in that when we took um the companies, we'll just say the Highline side of the company. So we we put 15 companies together in four years. Every one of those companies had their own culture. Every one of those companies was successful, and and they were regional, some of them pretty small, 20, 30 million dollars, pretty small, but they had a culture. And then you in 2020, when when we partnered with with Prisker, the other half of the company was war and distribution. Highly successful company, um, 600 million dollars, 100 years old, super successful company, strong culture. You've got 15 companies here, you've got one company there, you're gonna put them together and create a culture. Well, what culture are you gonna do? Everyone agrees we should have one culture, and everyone thinks it ought to be theirs.

Behzad Rassuli: 34:12

That's exactly where I am right now.

Darcy Curran: 34:14

Yeah, and so, so, so we are really, really fortunate in that. And in so going back to 2016 to now, we got to build the management team person by person by person. Very rarely, mid-career, do you get to start or you get to use all the experience you've gained over 30 years and start from scratch. So, first person that I hired was Jonas, who's our head of head of HR. Tell him I'm move-I just moved to town from Canada. I don't know anybody. I I looked him up on LinkedIn. We have kids the same age. I just want to learn about the area. So we met at we what we call my lucky Panera. Uh, there's a Panera over there in Germantown that if I if I my first time I meet a lot of people, I try to meet them there because it's my lucky Panera. And so Jonas got there 10 minutes before I did, bought his own coffee so he wouldn't owe me anything. Oh my God. And we sat down and we talked about the opportunity. And my what I told him is how often in life do you get to use all the experience you've gained over dozens and dozens of years and start over? And we don't have an HR department. We're gonna create culture from scratch. We're gonna create all of our processes, everything from scratch, and it's gonna be yours. I'm gonna hand it to you. I'm going to enable you, I'm gonna make you accountable, and I'm gonna be here with you all along, and we're gonna we're gonna decide what this company feels like. And he went home and told his wife that night, he goes, I think I'm quitting my company. Yeah, I'm sold. I mean, I'm pretty passionate about it and and so so you know, you so not everybody wants to do that. There's nothing wrong. Some people are working at really big companies and like the trappings of a big company, and they like they like all that. Some people are working at smaller companies and love the feel of a smaller company. We were 300 million, and I wanted to, I wanted to bring in a group of people to help get us to a billion. First was a billion, then it was two billion. And what I've what I said was I want people who have seen what large looks like, what really good looks like, but also be willing to roll up their sleeves and start from scratch and make your impression on it. Um and not everybody wants to do that, and that doesn't mean they're wrong, but there's a group of people, I was one, Jonas was one, we found a group of people who have seen what great looks like, who've seen what big looks like, taken lessons good and bad from that, and said, if I had the opportunity to create the Tim Shipley did it with our Salesforce, um, you know, all of our people did it. If I have the ability to use all of my experience and start from scratch, that's really exciting.

Behzad Rassuli: 36:45

Yeah, but uh I understand the opportunity to take your business experience and grow $300 million business into a billion-dollar business. You know, I know that sounds extreme, but I can see how if you've been a part of a multi-billion dollar business, you understand how to scale it and uh and grow a company. But maybe it's just because I'm not from the HR world. The idea of taking a hundred-year-old culture and several other cultures and saying, hey, those are great, but we're gonna dismantle those and figure out what our new culture is together. Sounds like, I mean, it's almost sysophy, and it's like, yeah, I don't know how you're gonna do that.

Darcy Curran: 37:21

So again, though, it's an incredible opportunity, right? So you everything works and you've got to figure out so the only way to do it, the only way to do it, and Jonas and I figured this out very early on, the only way to do it is to be super intentional with everybody. And so he and I, we would go to a plant in a DC every single month for over a year, and we'd have a town hall, and we would stand up there, and and my my my mantra was listen, we're gonna create a culture from scratch. It's not gonna be Warren, it's not gonna be Highline, it's gonna we're gonna take the best of both and we're gonna create a new culture going forward. We've created a new company, we're going to define what that means. And so I stood up, Jonas and I stood there and we said, okay, here's here's what it is. I want to be the best company to work for, the best company to buy from, the best company to sell to. I can't define that. So here in these town halls, we did two a month. We said, if if I tell you the guidelines are, I want to create, I want us to create the best company to work for. What does that mean to you? So you tell me what it means. As I I think about it, I want to hire you at 18 years old, and you retire at the end of your career, and you had it, you got everything you wanted out of your career. What does that company look like? And we would have these town halls, and people would initially they wouldn't say anything, and then somebody would say Yeah, that's uh that's I mean, I can see why they wouldn't say anything.

Behzad Rassuli: 38:47

It's almost like a it's a trap almost. Right? It's all or it's almost like you know, you're playing, you're paying lip service to the idea that hey, like, you know, whatever you guys want to do.

Darcy Curran: 38:55

Yeah, and and so so you know, we we just throw some things out, you know, and and and what happens is when you you go to your people and you say, We're gonna do this. First of all, they don't believe you, right? Yeah, it sounds great, whatever. Thanks for the pizza, I'm going back to work. But you have to what what what we did is as we started talking about that, you start getting really common themes, right? What people are looking for is treat me with respect as a human being, create a safe work environment, train me, give me, give me the the the ability to move up in my career, right? Recognition. They're they're not they're not difficult, they're not they're not uh too much to ask for. So we start talking about this. Then then as we're putting this company together, as we change, we had to change, we had, I don't know, 19 or 20 different benefit packages and pace, as we consolidated all that to one benefit package, we tied it back to because you've told us this is important to you with respect to benefits, we're switching to Blue Cross Blue Shield or whatever. And so what we did is we got information from them, what was important from them, and then we went and made changes, and our communication was always tying it back to we're not corporate deciding this. You guys have said this is important to you. So we went back and we acted, and now we're doing this and we're doing that, and communicating back to them. And one great example was we were in the we were in Dallas, Texas one time at a at a at a manufacturing plant, and nobody would say anything, and nobody would say anything. And and I said, Look, my plane doesn't leave for three hours. We're gonna sit here and we're just gonna sit here and stare at each other, we're out of pizza. And finally, some guy raised his hand. He goes, Why is the break room in the in the plant so crappy and the one in the office is so nice? And I look at Jonas, he looks at me, I'm like, I don't know, let's go. So all 50 or 60 of us got up and we went to the one in the in the in the office, and it was nice. The break room had nice cabinets and appliances and lighting and toilets were great, and bathrooms. We go to the one in the in the plant, it was terrible, it was embarrassing. So right then and right there, I I raised my hand. The guy who raised his hand, I said, Okay, you're in charge. Uh you're in charge of this. You're gonna tell me when we've done it to your satisfaction. Went to the plant manager and we said, you I'm approving the money that you need to get this up to snuff. And when he's happy, we're satisfied, and we're gonna we're gonna come have a new grand reopening of of the of the break room. And the whole thing cost five or six thousand dollars. They weren't asking much, right? But that's incredible. And so so we we so and what happens is then word starts to spread throughout the organization. These people are serious. They're gonna they're gonna do what they say. They really do care about the work environment and care about us as people. We did new cabinets and new appliances and paint and redid the bathrooms and all that. It wasn't a significant investment, but it was a significant gesture that was the right thing to do. First of all, shame on us for not having done it before. Shame on us for letting it get there and not noticing it.

Behzad Rassuli: 41:52

That's actually more common to not do anything, to not pick up on those things. I mean, the the evidence of that is the fact that that break room was in the condition it was in. Why don't why does that happen? Why do why don't either more executives and leadership teams pay attention to those little things and empower their employees to fix them themselves because it is only $5,000? Or what condition does a company get into where they allow those things to atrophy? Is it at the employee level or is it the management level?

Darcy Curran: 42:22

I think I don't know the answer. I don't know the answer because we let it get there. So you know, I would say uh we we're no better than anybody else, other than we decided we were going to create, we we got the opportunity mid-career to start something from scratch. That's not how you would start it. That's not how you would, you can't say people are at the core of everything we do and then provide them that work, that workplace. And and and God bless the guy who raised his hand and said it because that showed us that we have a lot of work to do. And the only way we're gonna do it was by asking people and engaging them and then communicating back to them as we made changes. We're doing this, we've changed this because you said it was important to you. And then so that's with our people, and then with our vendors, we went to our vendors and said, Hey, I want to be the best to sell to. What does that mean? We interviewed dozens and dozens and dozens of vendors, and it kind of boils down to um pay your bills on time, grow faster than the market, and we come out with new products, get them to market really fast because they're typically high margin. And that's not that much to ask for. So I told those guys we when we met, when we met with the the vendors, we told them we want you to have strategy meetings every year and how to you in your strategy meeting, you're trying to figure out how to run more business through us because you make more money when you run through us. And it sort of it sort of distills down to that. And then you go to customers and you say, Well, I want to be the buy the best to buy from. What does that mean? Again, it sort of distills down to you know, care about me as a human being, make me feel like norm walking into cheers, have my stuff at a fair price. It's not more complicated than that.

Behzad Rassuli: 43:58

But do you think, I mean, I'm just gonna challenge you on this a little bit. Do you think it it sounds like with the vendors and the customers, you have maintained that rapport where you check in all the time? What about the employees? I can see how when you're starting this new uh organization and you're building a new culture, you really want to put your best foot forward, you and Jonas go out there and you meet the team and you give them all the opportunities. Um Do you think if I spoke with a number of your employees today, uh full transparency, I spoke with a number of your employees before we sat down? Uh-uh. But um do you think they would say that, you know, uh we we are we still feel empowered, the company is still doing, you know, uh, you know, is is culture first, and we're really leading from you know the uh the base versus the top kind of thing?

Darcy Curran: 44:49

Yeah, I I think two things. I think um we're trying really hard. We have just yesterday we had an all-employee town hall. We have one every quarter. We talk to them about the strategy, where we're going, we highlight things. Um, you saw our kudos room and the lunch, our kudos wall in the lunchroom. We're trying very hard as as as you get bigger and and more spread out, communication becomes difficult. You have to make sure you don't lose that. But but it's not, this isn't a Darcy thing, it's not a Jonas thing, it's an everybody thing. And we've got ambassadors at every level of the company who are are championing what we are and holding us accountable when we're not. And we're very, very open to somebody raising their hand or sending an email or call saying, hey, you're you're failing here. This isn't this isn't what we say we are. And we're we're confident and comfortable enough that says, dang it, we're we're gonna fix that, we're gonna get it right. You're you're right, we're gonna we're gonna do that. And this is not about me whatsoever. This is about the entire organization. Starts with senior leadership, works, works throughout the entire organization. Um, that this is who we're gonna be first. An outcome of that will be we grow and we're profitable and all that. But first and foremost, we're gonna create an organization that lives like this. We're gonna get it wrong a lot. We get it wrong a lot.

Behzad Rassuli: 46:10

Yeah.

Darcy Curran: 46:11

Um, but we're never um we're never satisfied. We don't think we've gotten there. We're always open to hearing the feedback. So Yeah, I I agree.

Behzad Rassuli: 46:22

I appreciate you fielding that question. And I playing it back in my head, I feel like I set it up as a trap saying I spoke to you a number of your employees. However, I will say that it was your employees that uh that really pushed me to speak with you today. You know, they all uh said you you really you worked really hard at it, but unfortunately I am persistent and uh my team is tenacious, and we were gonna make this happen because your team wouldn't let it go either. They every time we uh convened at industry events, they said you have to speak to Darcy. So it wasn't this wasn't coming from you. Actually, your team did exactly as you said. They they uh it's not a Darcy thing. Yeah, it's not a Darcy. They they made it very clear that it is not it is an us thing.

Darcy Curran: 47:08

We we had the opportunity to create culture out of whole cloth because we had we had all these different cultures. We got to take the best from Highline, the best from Warren, we got to put them all together and hire people that came from brought other things. We got to create it from whole cloth, and it is the furthest thing on earth from a Darcy thing. It's an us thing. And and everybody's very I hope, I think, is very protective of it and and and works together to not let us slip. Yeah, but that's not just anybody, right?

Behzad Rassuli: 47:37

You have to hire those people. Oh yeah. So how do you think about hiring? You know, what do you, when you think about hiring people? Obviously you spent a little bit of time on Jonas, but Jonas is one of I mean I think you're close to 2,000 employees now. Yeah. How do what are your some of your hiring philosophies?

Darcy Curran: 47:53

So yeah, um, first of all, uh the two traits I think I personally value most when I'm hiring somebody is is tenacity and intellectual curiosity. Oh, okay. So I think tenacity, if you hire some, I don't care about specific product knowledge or industry knowledge. If you hire someone who refuses to lose, that person is somebody you're want you're gonna want to go through battle with, good times and bad times. And if somebody has intellectual curiosity, that means they're gonna continue learning throughout their career, they're gonna want to pick up new things, they're gonna listen to other people within business and outside of business. It's not just business related, but people with intellectual curiosity are gonna constantly challenge how we do things, why we do things, why we don't do things. You know, part of uh hardest part of strategy is deciding what not to do. So sitting there and thinking about what we do and what we don't do and why don't we do that. And you want people who are not going to just accept what we do and come in and just go to work and do this. You want people who are going to refuse to lose and people who are going to raise their hand and say, hey, have we thought about this or why are we doing this or there's a better way to do that? So those two I always I always look for. Within the senior leadership team, as we grew that, what we tried to get is people, I talk about it who have who have been in big companies, who have been in really well-run companies, and were eager to come backward to where we were, roll up their sleeves, and create something from scratch.

Behzad Rassuli: 49:28

Yeah, I mean, I love that pitch. How do you take, how do you how many, how many times do you have an opportunity to take all of your knowledge and then start over anew and say, hey, listen, I I I have all the answers to the test. Yeah. I just gotta like fill them in.

Darcy Curran: 49:40

And and and the ability to leave that legacy and just hand you, you've got the baton, you're handling your someone handed it to you, you're gonna have it for a while, you're gonna hand it to somebody else. But to create your impact, and you know, one of the one of the biggest impacts, the p people who had the biggest impact in this company is is Brad Moreski, who's now our president and COO.

Behzad Rassuli: 50:00

He's from Procter and Gamble.

Darcy Curran: 50:01

Procter and Gamble, Gillette, Bridgestone, um and hired him as a CFO. And um, what impressed me, well, a lot of things impressed me, um, but I I I we interviewed uh via Zoom or Teams on a Friday afternoon. It was supposed to be an hour, it went like two and a half hours, and we decided we needed to keep talking, so we talked again on Saturday for another couple hours. And he was super excited to be able to create what we're talking about, to get on this ride with us and to really have a big impact. And um what I liked about him a lot is his last four or five years at Bridgestone, they parachuted so they took him out of divisional CFO roles and parachuted him into growing or troubled parts of the company and said, go fix it. So he was a CFO with um real practical experience in the business, but also his personality is exactly when we're hiring people, we're thinking about is this somebody you want to sit in a conference room with and have contentious arguments with and go out and have lunch with afterward? Are they gonna are they people who in our in our senior leadership team, we're not good at staying in our lanes. I don't want people staying in their lanes. I want everybody contributing on every topic that's that's what's gonna happen if you hire intellectually curious people.

Behzad Rassuli: 51:17

Everyone's gonna wonder whatever like are you sure about that? Yeah. Like how why do you think that?

Darcy Curran: 51:21

Yeah, and Colleen, who runs IT, will chime in on sales, and and and Carrie, who runs marketing, will chime in on finance, and that's what you want. And so Brad brings this. I mean, he is one of the most upbeat people. What he has created within the finance team is un unparalleled. He's had the biggest impact. If anyone I've ever worked with in my entire career, I think he has had the largest impact on an organization in the shortest amount of time. And that's why so we moved him from CFO to president and COO um about a year ago. Oh wow. And, you know, this guy is the first person in here in the morning. He makes coffee at all the coffee pots in the building. He walks around constantly. He is he is a culture builder, and he is somebody that you know you you look forward to seeing him when you get to the office in the morning. And that's not just me, that's everybody. Um he believes in what we're doing fundamentally, all the all the basics of being being a CFO, being a president, being a chief operating officer. He's got that in spades, but he also has the culture piece, the soft piece.

Behzad Rassuli: 52:28

So um but when you bring in all these people from these large companies, uh you know, uh you seem to figure out the culture thing, but uh, how do they not bring their own culture with them and their own personality?

Darcy Curran: 52:42

Yeah, well, we want them to bring we don't we don't culture's never done. Right. Um so if they can bring something in that we can adopt and is better, great. Um but as you're going through the interview process, we we interviewed loads of people with the right technical skills or or better better technical skills than we have here, but they weren't gonna fit. Um I'm a big I'm a big believer of fit. They weren't gonna fit with our team. When you walked around here today and yesterday, you see, you see how we are.

Behzad Rassuli: 53:13

Right.

Darcy Curran: 53:14

That's great for us, it's not great for everybody. Um, there are some people who want to work in a hierarchical organization or something that's more buttoned up. We're not. We we take our business very seriously, we don't take ourselves very seriously at all. And you've lived that over the last couple of days. So that atmosphere attracts certain people. And if if those people are right for us, then we take them. It doesn't attract others. Doesn't mean that we're right or wrong. It's just what we have built, the way we've built it, um, it'll attract the right kind of people for us.

Behzad Rassuli: 53:44

Yeah. How do you but how when you say you don't stay in your lane? Obviously, I mean you don't have a lane, right? You're the CEO. Your lane is the entire company. But um, you know, can you walk me through maybe a recent debate or how do you solve problems in the company when you hire these people who are, you know, large company professionals in their discipline, and they come in and you know, you have to settle, but they're intellectually curious. So they are gonna debate across departments. And one person is gonna say, I'm from Procter and Gamble, I'm from William and Sonoma, this is how we do it. And then I'm in HR and I'm in finance. How do you settle those debates?

Darcy Curran: 54:24

So uh first of all, I I don't settle them. Um they come up absolutely, they always come up, but my job isn't to settle them. So as I think about my job, I I am chief cheerleader, chief belief builder, chief of strategy. So my job is to select the right people, um, make sure that they are accountable. They're they're accountable for what so if it's sales or marketing or HR or whatever, you own that and you are 100% accountable. I expect you to own it. First thing I have to do is make sure you are enabled to achieve that. So you're you've got the right resources, you've got the right people, you've got the right structure. What I'm asking for out of out of you is crystal clear. This is success, looks like this. You're enabled, you're accountable, you own it. I get out of their way. My job then is to be a sounding board for them. My job is I I I will parachute in, spend some, spend some time with you, figuring out where you're working. Inevitably, things come up in an organization, not because people fight or something, but there are with any, with any with any um functions, there's gonna be competing priorities, right? So so things will come up where IT wants this or sales will want that or marketing will want that. And we'll sit down. If you have the right people that all have this connection, you're gonna you're gonna argue through it correctly, and you're all gonna go out to lunch afterward and have a great time. You're going to discuss with each other in a respectful, appropriate manner. So it's gonna be about issues, it's not gonna be about personalities, first of all. And then what I'll do, and and this is not just me, this is what we do. I don't again, I don't want to make it about what I do. What we do is created an atmosphere where we get in there and we talk about it and we just we do it through a lot of questions. What are we trying to achieve? Which is which is more which is more important, higher priority right now. Well, well, if we wanted to do that, what resources will it take? And are those resources working on something that we've deemed we've agreed as a higher priority? We've got a we've got a really tight project management office that has, we've got at any given time 12 or 13 really significant products or projects that we're working on. And how does it affect those? So we get in there and we just start talking as a group, and it's not me, it's us going through it rationally as a group. Well, if we want to introduce this new private label product, or if we want to buy this company, or if we want to do whatever, how does it affect everything else we're doing? Is it is it a higher priority? Is the timeline reasonable? Are we resourced correctly? And at the end of the day, you get to the right answer because the people treat each other.

Behzad Rassuli: 57:00

Do you decide the answer?

Darcy Curran: 57:01

Most of the most of the 99% of the time we get to the right answer. Okay. Um, I might have the tie-breaking vote, but very rarely do we get in there and I I'm the boss and this is what we're gonna do. I I I couldn't tell you the last time that happened. As an organization.

Behzad Rassuli: 57:16

Did you have bosses like that that that it I'm I know that there are a lot of CEOs that that is their actual uh assessment of their job is to decide. Yeah, yeah. Right?

Darcy Curran: 57:30

To to s to sit down and say, I am the CEO and this is the one thing I'll say, I try hard to never make a decision that someone else can make. So I want them to be able to make skills. I want I want the organization and the leadership to be able to make decisions. And and and we have a team, we truly, truly, truly respect each other personally and professionally and care about each other.

Behzad Rassuli: 57:51

Yeah.

Darcy Curran: 57:52

And you're going to argue the right way. And you're and we all have the same goal in mind. Again, you may be a little parochial on your priorities versus someone else's priorities, but they're gonna get there. And and at the end of the day, we're sitting around a table, they're gonna be able to make the right decisions. Um very, very rarely is there an instance where I have to say, okay, you're not getting anywhere. This is I can't remember the last time that happened. But my job is if if if I start making decisions that other people can make, then I'm usurping their power, I'm undercutting them. I'm I'm saying you're accountable, but yet I'm gonna tell you how to do it. You know? All right.

Behzad Rassuli: 58:28

Well, what about I'm just gonna stick on this for a second, but uh I want to test this leadership team. What was one of the most significant setbacks you feel like you guys you faced? Maybe maybe it's not even this thing, but professionally or at Highline, yeah. What is the most significant?

Darcy Curran: 59:21

All right, well, obviously everyone faced COVID, everyone faced supply chain. I'm not gonna do that. That's everyone faced that. Okay, fair. Okay, so you know, during COVID, people stopped driving cars. That's a problem. Yeah. Right. But we'll not even go to COVID. So um I want to say 2021. So we have we we sell a lot of filters um to QuickLubes and oil change companies. So we do a we we have had a we had had a sole source supply agreement with a manufacturer for over 30 years. Every year we bought 100% of our filters from them. We go out and sell it to QuickLubes and oil change places, and um we did roughly 27 million filters, I think it was, right? I know it was 27. Wow. 27 million filters. For 30 years, we bought it from this company. Internationally. Yep. The CEO of that company, um, really good friend of mine, I know his wife, he knows my wife, we know each other's kids, because that's how we how you want to do business, right? And so we had just signed a new a new um contract, renewed our contract for another three years. We agreed we're gonna buy twenty seven million filters next year, blah, blah, blah. That company got sold. That company who we had sole sourced our products with for 30 years by January or February. February, we had gotten to such an impasse that they weren't going to sell us any more filters. And I wasn't he wasn't going to sell it, and we weren't going to buy it if he did sell it because we didn't agree with the way they were running the business, what they had done to the business, their business practices. We didn't like it. So we've got this business. We've got a business, a chunk of our business, uh, one of our channels, well over $100 million of business. 27 million filters. 27 million filters. I mean, we sell mostly filters in that space. Filters are our lead product. We've got a whole bunch of customers that have sole source filters from us. And we got to the point where we said, we can't do business with these people. In fact, we're going to sue the people. And so as an organization, we talked about it. We all agreed there's no going forward with this. But if you turned around, you said, okay, what are we going to do? Yeah. Because nobody else sole sourced for 30 years. And we had a lot of customers. You know, there's there's there's there's there's QuickLube franchisees who had hundreds of QuickLubes who were sole sourced with us. And we had to explain to them what happened, it do as do what we could for as long as we could, but we ran out of filters.

Behzad Rassuli: 1:01:47

I mean, we just did because I thought you were gonna say you missed like a quarter, but it's five percent of the yeah.

Darcy Curran: 1:01:51

No, we missed over a year. So what we had to do, so we we sit down as an organization and we said, okay, we've all agreed this is the right thing to do. Failure is not an option. What are we gonna do? So we said, okay, we're gonna go create a national, uh, sorry, a global supply chain network where we're gonna go over to Asia and we're gonna go over everywhere and and and have start relationships with manufacturing plants and build it from scratch. We created, and I'll get it wrong, it's it's you know, like 13 plants in 11 different countries and and you know, since then, since we decided we're gonna go do it ourselves, the heck with you guys, we're gonna build it ourselves. Since then, you know, um mobile one has has made us their sole source of mobile one filters for the next five years. Um so if you buy a mobile one filter in North America, it it's coming through us. So votes of confidence on what we did, how we did it. We're back to 99.1% fill rates in 48 hours anywhere in the country. And we've built this. So now we're super proud of it. We know how resilient our supply chain is. We know we got punched in the nose. We were on the we were on the canvas. We know as an organization we got back up. It's it's a rallying cry. We got we got every single customer back except for one, and I and we'll get them back eventually. But every single customer that was buying all those from us, we've won a whole bunch more customers than than we had before. That must have been so hard for you personally. Yeah, I mean, you don't sleep. You don't sleep. I mean, yeah, it's awful. But but again, for me personally, uh it wasn't me personally, it was the organization. It was the team. We all had our role. We all agreed it's the right thing to do. It's the only thing to do. We all said, okay, Robert Frost has this great quote says, the best way out is always through. There's no going around it, right? You're this is where we are. The only way we're gonna get through this is to get through this. You can you can't delay it, you can't go around it. You've got to put your head down, you gotta muscle through it. Um, and and as an organization, everybody rallied together and said, We're gonna build our own. The heck with them. We're gonna build our own, we're gonna build it better. And if we got to build our own, how would we do it? And so everyone chumped, and this was this was it was it was a leadership team decision to sever the ties, a leadership team decision to go source our own, and every single person in that leadership team, every single function in the company had to have played a major role for us to get there, or it wouldn't have worked.

Behzad Rassuli: 1:04:16

But did you how did you Yes, yes, the we the we as an organization, but how did you, you know, s handle that as a leader in terms of like exhibiting confidence and uh like you know, we must have been having a bunch of bad days.

Darcy Curran: 1:04:36

Yeah, well well, here's the thing. I'm a firm, firm believer. So my job, I can't have a bad day. I just can't I I believe the leader of a- What does that mean you can't have a bad day?

Behzad Rassuli: 1:04:45

I believe that everyone has a bad day.

Darcy Curran: 1:04:47

Yeah, I know. Well you do, but you don't show it. So what happens is as the CEO of a company, if something goes wrong, people look to you. And if you freak out, they know they should freak out. Um if people come in, if you have an open door policy and people are coming, they want to have a call with you or walk into your office, and if they see you having a temper tantrum, slamming, sh shouting, they're they're gonna be less likely to come in next time and ask you for your advice on things. So I believe the leader of an organization has to has to maintain just a very level playing field. So that that person can't be up and down. You can't work for mercurial people well and comfortably and confidently. You have to, in order for someone to be comfortable coming to me with an issue or a problem or an opportunity, they have to feel like I'm going to internalize it, ask them rational questions, push back here and there. But I can't, I I can't blow up. So, I mean, there are like there are a lot of times during that process with the filters where I had just had to hop in my car and just drive. Yeah. You know, just hey, I'm gonna be, I'm gonna be out today doing stuff. And I just had to get out of here because I wasn't able to control my emotions and I needed to not be around. You just left the office. I just left the office. I there are times I would work from home. There are times I would just get in a car and drive somewhere, go for two or three hours half a day and just drive. But what I couldn't do was project this roller coaster of emotions to the organization because you can't have people experiencing that because an organization can't work like that. Yeah. I had many, many, many, many sleepless nights. I had discussions one-on-one with people where they knew how upset I was or how scared we were about it, or something like that. But as an organization, you have to be the chief cheerleader. You're the one who can see over the horizon, you're picking the long-term strategy. We had to talk a lot. We talked a whole lot, not just me. We talked a whole lot about what this is going to be on the other side, um, why we made the decision we made, how we're gonna get there, how is it gonna be painful for how long, and what it's gonna be like at the end. So, so I, you know, I'm a firm believer that the the CEO of the company has to be just steady.

Behzad Rassuli: 1:07:05

Yeah, yeah. Um you have used an I've heard you use another quote, uh, and maybe it's applicable to this, but uh I I guess it's like kind of like deal with the situation as it is, but bloom where you're planted.

Darcy Curran: 1:07:21

Bloom where you're planted, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Early boss of mine, one of the most influent, you talked about people who influenced me a lot at Ferguson. I worked for probably half my career for a guy named John Garrett. Um, and and I used to tell John Garrett he was often wrong but never in doubt. Um he was and to this day, I'm I spoke to John Garrett yesterday. So I haven't worked for John Garrett, oh my gosh, since probably the 90s. Um I talked to him yesterday. Um he helped me when it was time for me to leave Ferguson and go to private equity. He helped me. His wife, his children. Um I talked to him yesterday because one of his grandchildren was getting engaged, had gotten engaged over the weekend, and he wanted that. That's incredible. That's that's that's culture. That's culture. That's David Peebles started that at Ferguson Enterprises. We all have that running through our veins. John Garrett, I mean, so his wife Rose, his his daughters and son, and son-in-laws, and daughter-in-laws, and grandchildren. Um we don't uh we're the we're family. Um but he had he but he had um this saying where you bloom where you're planted. And you think about going through your career as you're going up, you're always looking at what's the next thing. Well, I want to I want to be that, I want to be that. Um and what he kept saying is bloom where you're planted. So if I put you in a job, it's it's not going to be where you want to be ultimately. Learn everything you can from that, make everyone around you better while you're there. Gain there's experiences you're gonna gain from having that position. So gain all the experiences, help everybody be successful around you, and then work yourself out of a job. You become so valuable to the organization that I have to I have to promote you.

Behzad Rassuli: 1:09:01

That is such a simple. It's something simple but so profound because it calls on such like illustrative, um uh you know, and like a picture in my head where I've I always uh walk around wondering why people do the jobs they do, right? Like you even started this by saying I was gonna go to law school or I was studying uh British literature or poetry or something like that, right? And probably there was a passion there, but somehow you were stuck in plumbing, right? But you found your calling there and um or at least something that sparked your spark there and that's led you to here, but it's not just you, it's literally everybody, right? I don't know how many people are in the jobs or businesses or industries that they aspired to be in, because I don't think anyone even knew half the things that like the people I don't think people who are in your company even assumed that there was like fluid mixing business that they were going to be a part of. And when you use the phrase bloom where you're planted, I think about seeds, right? Like things off of trees or plants. They don't have a calling or a pick or of where they land and what dirt they fall in. They just bloom where they're planted and they're successful wherever they are. And it almost makes me think about you know, our ambitious people as like unnatural. The natural way is just bloom where you're planted, like be successful and landing where you are. But and maybe I'm taking it too far from the case.

Darcy Curran: 1:10:36

No, no, but but but sort of to to drive this metaphor into the ground, the the people who are above you. So as I was growing up in Ferguson and I'm doing a job that I really wanted the next one. I can't, I want to be that, I want to be that. But I think about you know, the Chip Hornsby's and John Garrett's different people I work for, they as as they're planting that seed, they're not yelling at that seed to grow, they're removing impediments for growth, right? So they're they're helping that they're helping you bloom where you're planted by removing impediments for you to be successful. And if you if I can tell you in every single job I've ever had in however long I've been working, 39 years, um uh I've learned something from every single role. I didn't love every single role. Some of them I didn't like, but I had to do it. I had to learn from it. I had to what what do I take from that? And how do I use that in my next role? And how do I get someone to replace me? So a pipeline of promotable people is something we talk a lot about at Ferguson, is you're gonna win with good people, and you can only grow as an organization if you've got a pipeline of promotable people that are coming through the organization that are all eager for bigger and better things and are gonna bloom where they're planted, they're gonna be really successful here, and as an organization, you're gonna grow and grow and grow.

Behzad Rassuli: 1:11:51

So, one of the common traits, and you just did it, and I want to call it out, but you uh with executives and you know, some of some of the best executives is that they are rich and deep storytellers. And so you I was bringing up kind of your leadership style and the culture of this organization, and I mentioned a an artifact on one of your walls over here, and you took the story back all the way to like 1805. 1805. 1805. But it it is so uh with such deep history and richness that you bring it back up to the present day as to why you are the way they are you are, the way you lead, the way you do, or what you want uh this company to be. It really is. It's something, it's one of the most um uh remarkable skills that that I pay attention to or notice in in successful executives. There are a lot of books behind us. There are books behind us, there are books on your desk. Uh I've in all the time. Yeah, and all the conversations I've had with you, you're referencing a book or talking about a book or bringing up a quote. You're an average reader. You're an incredibly voracious reader. Voracious reader. Can you just talk about that for a second?

Darcy Curran: 1:13:00

Yeah, it's just it's it's you know, why I became an English maker. Two reasons you become an English maker because you're a voracious reader and because you love disciplines where there's not a right or wrong answer. If I can write a 20-page paper and wear you down with words, I'll do that all day long. Um so I've just always been a voracious reader. My parents were were voracious reader, voracious readers. My family all are voracious readers. Um you grew up in a I grew up in a house full of books and full of, you know, we we trade books back and forth constantly. Um I've had long commutes. You know, when I w for a while when we I was living in Boston, the b north of Boston, we bought a company south of Boston. I was commuting two hours to work, two hours home, books on tape, audiobooks. Um I just um Do you do you have any that stand out to you? Oh god, I've got a million. So last yeah, yeah. So a couple of that are. Yeah, a couple interesting. I talked about um I talked about um The Good Life recently. Um very so many of them are not are not business books. I always I usually will have a business book, but I always have a lot of historical books and all that. There's one um one real really interesting one I read lately. It was called Ben Franklin's Last Bet. And Ben Franklin, he died in like 1805 or something, but before he died, uh, in his will, he left $1,000 to the city of Boston and $1,000 to the city of Philadelphia, his his city that he's born in, city that he he was apprenticed in and spent his adult life. And he he he was a huge believer in the trades. And he left $1,000 to both cities, and he's the parameters were you have to loan this out to tradesmen starting their own business in the city, um, and the interest rate has to be this and the loan has to be repaid by then. And he figured it out that um if you use this $1,000 and you you you use this interest rate, um, at the end of a hundred years, this is all he wrote this all. So the city, the city could take no fee to manage the fund. Um, it had to be managed free of cost, it had to go to these tradespeople starting. At the end of a hundred years, there ought to be this much in the fund. And I want you to scrape that out and then open parks or libraries or things that are free to everybody in the city, and then do it again for another hundred years. And and it and it went on until oh gosh, 1990 something. I've never heard of this. Yeah. And so so um the book is really interesting. It's just about how also how each city managed the money differently. But most importantly, there's a guy who was thinking 200 years out. How do I influence people in things 200 years out?

Behzad Rassuli: 1:15:40

But see, that's that's a less you said you don't read business books, but that's almost a better lesson. That that kind of like long-term, sustainable, you know, uh leadership thinking. I mean, the the kind of lessons, you know, that we learn today, they're almost these, it's uh what's it called? The um, it's like the shirt sleeve to shirt sleeve phenomenon where like the first generation, you know, builds it and then the second generation kind of maintains or spends it, and then the third generation just blows it. Yeah. You know, I mean, we don't it's not very typical that people think in like 200 plus year time lock.

Darcy Curran: 1:16:18

Yeah, we don't have the luxury of doing that. And but when somebody can and then is smart enough to figure out how to have that impact. So so yeah, so so the that that's a history book, but it's also a business book, right? It's it's about how to have strategic long-term thinking. Um I mean, another another book interesting, uh the book called Chesapeake Requiem. In the middle of Chesapeake Bay is this tiny little island called Tangier Island. And like 600 people live on Tangier Island. But if you ever ate soft shell crabs on the East Coast, they probably came from Tangier Island. And what happens is the Chesapeake Bay is rising. And this little island, I went and visited it. I was in high school and um drove up there, took the ferry over and went and visited it. And there's no doctor on Tangier Island, there's no cars on Tangier Island, um, you know, and um these people are are fisher, fishermen, and crab people and um and very hard scrabble existence. Um, and that they love that existence. And so remote, uh I went there in the 82, it was so remote that they've sort of maintained a really one of the one of the best examples of a 17th-century British dialect anywhere in the world. So linguists actually go there and study their their phrases and words and all that. Anyway, um this guy who wrote for the Virginia Pilot newspaper had spent some time there in the 80s and went back and spent a year there recently and studied the impact of the rising Chesapeake Bay. Um, you know, coastal sustainability is a really big deal. Um and the Chesapeake Bay is is overtaking this island and and how are the people dealing with it and you know, going so it just, you know, again, it's just uh I have uh intellectual curiosity. I I I read a lot of books about a lot, a whole lot of things.

Behzad Rassuli: 1:18:04

You're a very passionate people person. You know, you think you have a deep connection to your family, long history and memory, and connection to people you've worked with and friends, and you bring that into your company, and you want your the people in this business to bring theirs in too. Um I want them to bring theirs in, yeah.

Darcy Curran: 1:18:25

More importantly than I want them to know that matters to me, I want them to bring theirs in. Because that's a rich history then. And you you put all that together and it's a rest of the city.

Behzad Rassuli: 1:18:33

I mean, yeah, your your personal one is uh Newfoundland.

Darcy Curran: 1:18:36

There's a uh a deed, right? Or what is it? So um, so both my mom and dad's families have lived in Newfoundland, Canada since early 1800s, 1805, 1806. So Ian, Connie, and I, the last three in my family, are the only three people in our family, my mom or dad's side, not born in Newfoundland since the early 1800s. Um and so over there on the wall, I've got a deed to a house. We still have a house up there, we have a farm up there.

Behzad Rassuli: 1:19:04

Side note about Newfoundland. Um when I was preparing for this conversation, you know, I had a blank sheet of paper in front of me, and uh I my nine-year-old was walking around. I said, Hey, can you help me out for a second? Uh I'm talking to a guy next week and he runs a company, and I just I'm supposed to ask him questions. I can't think of anything. And I he said, I said, Can I just tell you about him a little bit and then you help me think of questions? He goes, Yeah, sure. Um and I said, Look, you know, he's got a huge family, he's number 10 of 10 kids. He reads a ton of books. Uh, he's a CEO of a company in Memphis, Tennessee. His lineage is from Newfoundland. He goes, Oh, Newfoundland, ask him about the Titanic. And he points on a map. And it I did not know the Titanic sank so close to Newfoundland, but apparently 9-11 is not the only boats.

Darcy Curran: 1:19:57

The rescue boats came out from Newfoundland.

Behzad Rassuli: 1:19:59

Yeah, yeah, it's incredible. I mean, is that something that the that's like in the history of Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Darcy Curran: 1:20:04

I mean, it's just it's you know, it it's interesting. The people who believe in the flat earth, one of the corners of Earth is Fogo Island, Newfoundland. And um, you know, and 9-11 is the best example. When the rest of the world got to see what Newfoundlanders are like was on 9-11. Uh-huh. When when uncoordinated, you know, Gamb Gambo, Newfoundland, Gander, Newfoundland, St. John's, Newfoundland, these people just went out and took people into their to their homes, and people got to understand the United United flight. The entire flight was in Gamb. They they they people from Gambo came out and picked up folks from this flight, this United flight that was going into, I forgot where, but um, that flight started a scholarship fund for the children of Gambo, Newfoundland to thank them. Uh so a college scholarship fund for the entire town of Gambo, Newfoundland from this one flight because they had on ostensibly the worst day that could have been anybody had ever experienced, terrible. They showed such hospitality. And and and and it didn't need to be coordinated because that's who they are. And that's my mom. I mean, that's my my siblings, you know. I I get it all from them. I'm the youngest, it all just trickles on down. You do what you do because of them. Um you you know, we we'll talk about it, the card the cards I do for them. Um so yeah, you you shared a couple of those in there. Can you talk about those yourself? Yeah, yeah. So um so I've got hundreds of cards. You know, you have your little your little five by seven card with your name across the top, you write them as thank you notes to people. Well, early on, very early on, when my son was born in 2001, around then, um, I decided that everybody in life, every parent, every child remembers the big things, the the really big things in life. And what you don't remember or memorialize are the little things. And and and the little things in life are what matter. So my dad coming to my soccer game is something that changed my life.

Behzad Rassuli: 1:22:02

Yeah.

Darcy Curran: 1:22:02

Right? And it was a big thing, but but little things matter. My mother, watching my mother up until she lived to be 99 a couple years ago, watching the grace with which she did everything she did, is the the the little day-to-day things mattered more than the big things. And so what I wanted to do is I wanted to capture all the little things that you forget. So I started, so I end up right right now, the cut to the end. I've got over a hundred cards for each kid that are the little things in life that you wouldn't remember. And what I'll do is I'll I'll write it down, I'll seal it in an envelope, I'll write, I'll write a cryptic thing on the front and a date, I'll throw it in a shoebox. And over years and years and years, I have hundreds of them for each kid. And now they're getting to an age where um it's fun at Christmas time or Thanksgiving or whatever. We pull out four or five for each kid and we open them. And you don't re it's so cryptic on the front you don't quite know what's in it. Um, but it might be. I mean, there's there's you know, there's I I read you one last night. I have my son's first tooth he ever lost. You know, you're six years old on this date. We were eating, we were eating chips at a Mexican restaurant, and your tooth got wobbly, and you came and you pulled it out, and you were bleeding all over, and you were so excited you ran over and all that. And we have his first tooth, and we have that thing. It wouldn't be something you remembered. First night in your big girl bed, your big boy bed. Um, those aren't all the little things that you that in life inform who you are, inform who you are, but are just day-to-day little things. I think it's really good to memorialize that. My my father-in-law's past now. My son caught his first fish with his grandfather on their property in their lake. I have the picture. I have a picture of those two with the first fish my son ever caught, and I wrote everything that happened that day, and it's sealed up, and and he's got that now for the rest of his life.

Behzad Rassuli: 1:24:01

But I I in a way, I I first of all, I love that, and I will try to do that in my own life. I will fail at that. I know that already, but I'm gonna try to because I love it so much. Um But I also know I see how in that exercise you see people. You know, you you personally let people know that you see them and you capture a moment of them, and that shows up in your company today. I mean, you shared with me, and I really appreciate it last night a note that you'd written your mom. You didn't remember writing it. It was just some random day. You couldn't even figure out why they were it's a lot of people, and it was just I I get it, there were like fleeting moments, but you captured it and you gave it to her, and um and she kept it.

Darcy Curran: 1:24:47

Yeah, yeah. So it it was it was it was. It was I got married in August of 97, and this was like eight months later. So I wasn't changing jobs, we weren't moving or whatever. I don't remember it at all, but my mom passed, and we're my sisters were cleaning out stuff and and found this note and got it back to me. And it's um it just says, Hey, I'm at this point in my life, I'm newly married, I'm I'm I'm working. Um my life turned out way better than I ever thought it would. I am a more confident person, I'm I'm I'm I'm very comfortable and confident where I am. My life turned out perfectly, and I owe all that to you.

Behzad Rassuli: 1:25:25

I mean, I can't as a parent, I can't imagine what that feels like getting that note. Thanks for sharing that with me. Um Well, I've spent a lot of time with you. I want to try to land this plane, uh, and I really appreciate the time you've given me today. Um, but you've built something pretty amazing here, um both on a professional, you know, kind of team and culture level, but also from a business level. What is your vision for this organization? You know, what do I what what should I look out for over the next few years?

Darcy Curran: 1:25:59

Yeah. So um so it took us 2016 to 2025 to go from to grow about a billion dollars, a little over a billion dollars. We're gonna grow the the plan is for the next five years to do it again. So we're currently roughly around two billion dollars today. When we're four billion, when we're six billion, when we're eight billion, um we will look similar, but what we'll do is we'll branch out. So I think about ways to grow a business. Easiest, fastest, most economical way to grow a business is to sell existing customers existing products. So there's a whole bunch of there's over a billion dollars of opportunity of products we already carry to customers we already have who aren't buying those products. So we've got that broken down to a SKU and a customer level. We know there's a billion dollars worth of growth sitting here. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

Behzad Rassuli: 1:26:47

What's an example?

Darcy Curran: 1:26:48

Um so a typical customer, you know, somebody who owns a couple shops in the Northeast, um, they buy five different categories from us, but they don't buy five others. Because everyone everyone that buys from us buys buys from other people too.

Behzad Rassuli: 1:27:00

Okay.

Darcy Curran: 1:27:01

So and as we think we we we take we have all of our customers segmented and we know the the ideal market basket for each one. And very few of them are buying everything we can. So without having new customers, without having new inventory, without having anything, we've got a billion-dollar opportunity to grow. Um that is the most economical way to grow. You know the customers like you because they buy from you, you know they pay their bills because you're letting them buy from you, you know they buy these products because other customers, other other contractors or other, other other shops buy those products. So that's that's one. So I I look at us, we're $2 billion. I think it's uh I don't want to downplay it, but getting to $4 billion and $6 billion, pretty darn easy, sticking to our knitting. So we think about our our big retail customers, so mass retail customers, let's talk about mass retail customers, not just automotive, but mass retail categories that they buy that they don't buy from us. So right now we're down the automotive aisle. Um, but if you go around the corner, there's a household cleaning aisle down there that has gallons of blown bottles, has liquids that are mixed in there. So existing customers, products they're already buying but not buying from you.

Behzad Rassuli: 1:28:15

Incredible.

Darcy Curran: 1:28:16

So so getting into household cleaners for it with existing customers is really adjacent. Again, we'll always stay out of hard parts because then we're competing with our customers. But we're trying to think about ways to grow that are really adjacent. We're not going, I don't envision us going over to Europe and Asia. We don't need to, because our success is our ability to deliver within concentric circles around our footprint. Our moat is our footprint, um, our our ability to manufacture and distribute, and then the moat is building that footprint is difficult and costly. We spent $20 million on one distribution center last year, and people aren't lining up to build manufacturing and distribution for cheap, heavy, consumable products. So I think about us saying, okay, with existing customers, fastest way to grow, existing products, existing customers, then you get existing customers, new products, then you get new products for existing customers. That's how you grow. So I think about through MA, um buying companies that are very adjacent, that's the same customer base but different products. So I think about household cleaners, I think about we we do very, very little in in heavy duty today. We do a whole lot of passenger car work, but heavy duty is super adjacent, same products, you know, different SKUs, but same, same categories and all that. Um you're not going to fight the EV transition for a long time in the in the heavy duty space. Um so I think about industri so I think about heavy duty, I think about household cleaners, I think about appearance chemicals that are everything over the hood, and I think about industrial lubes. So so wherever there's manufacturing, there's friction. That's right. And friction needs to be reduced. And so manuf so industrial lubs is pr those are pretty adjacent. And when you add those together, the total addressable market for a company like that is somewhere north of fifty billion dollars. Yeah. And we're we're scratching it too. So you'll stay busy for the foreseeable future.

Behzad Rassuli: 1:30:15

But you're not going to do this forever.

Darcy Curran: 1:30:17

No. What do you um what are you gonna do afterwards? What am I gonna do? Um Well, when I was when I was started work, I was gonna retire at 50 and I was gonna become Robin Williams in Dead Poets Society. My dream job was to coach soccer and teach English at a small New England high school. So I'm probably not gonna do that. They probably won't hire me anymore. What I want to do is I want to do this. I've got a lot of gas left in the tank. I want to keep doing this for a while. I want to successfully transition it to a successor. And in the perfect world, nobody notices. Right. In a perfect world, because it's not about me, it's about what we've built as a team. The succession makes sense. It happens. And everyone goes, Oh, yeah, that makes sense. Okay.

Behzad Rassuli: 1:31:01

Yeah.

Darcy Curran: 1:31:01

That makes perfect sense. And they don't notice I'm gone. So ideally, I'd trans I'd transition to chairman of the board here, go from CEO to chairman. Um, transition into successor here, the company then because it because what happens too? You you need someone coming in periodically to have a fresh look and take you in new angles and do all the things that you're not good at and they're better at. So so so for the organization, I want to be here as long as it makes sense for for for me, for them to be here and take and get further on this journey and then have a really smooth transition. And what I want to do then is serve on boards. Um I told you I'm on the I'm on the foundation board at William and Mary. I've really enjoyed that. Um I've been on our board since we started the company, but I but I really like the idea of lending my experience at a board level to sort of mid-market distribution companies, helping them go through the journey and make fewer of the mistakes that we did and maybe maybe help there. I think I think they'd be really fun to get on a handful of boards, um, chairman of this board, hand this over to somebody else at some point.

Behzad Rassuli: 1:32:06

Did uh I mean, do you are you gonna have the time to volunteer do all this volunteer work?

Darcy Curran: 1:32:10

I mean, so yeah, so so time. So uh I mentioned my mom earlier. So my mom became a widow, 52, 10 kids. Um and in her so my mom, we're trying to figure out the exact hours. I'll get it wrong, but she, as she's raising 10 kids, um, 52 years old, she went to Mass every single morning of her life. And when she left Mass, she would volunteer at Mary Immaculate Hospital in Newport News, Virginia. Um, she volunteered there, and at her retirement, she has more hours of it's north of 10,000 hours. So in her spare time. Falls in her in her spare time raising kids by herself and and who's watching you? Uh God no. Older older siblings. Older siblings, yeah. I'd get the mess knocked out of me if I messed up too much. But so so my mom found time where nobody should have ever found time. So we have time. We can create time, right? You prioritize things. So she not only did she volunteer at the hospital, then she ended up running the volunteers, then she ended up on the board of the hospital, and then at church they were building a new church for us, and she said, Well, um I've got some time, so I'll be on the design committee, I'll be on the construction committee. So there's a lady who, you know, never look never taller than five feet in her life, never more than 100 pounds in her life, 10 kids, um, and had time to do all those things. And so time and and my and I speak about her, and then I go to my wife. My wife's an obstetrician, my wife does everything in our family. Um, my wife gets more things done in the course of a day than any human being I've ever met. Like her superpower is she gets more stuff done than any human being ought to be able to do. So so time is it's almost a fallacy. I think I think you could people I look at my wife and I look at my mother. They the the amount of stuff they can fit into a day or a week is is almost limitless. I love it.

Behzad Rassuli: 1:34:15

And if you love it, and if you love it. It's clear that you've built something, you know, from the combination of the businesses to building this culture, um, to, you know, building a leadership team, building a company, and you have quite a vision for where this company is going to go in the future. If I talk to somebody five or ten years from now, uh, and they had spent some time with you in their professional time, what do you what do you want them to say about you? What kind of impression or impact do you want to have left behind?

Darcy Curran: 1:34:50

I've never thought about that. Um So, you know, I I've talked about John Garrett and and Chip Hornsby and um people who have who have had an impact on me. What what I'd I guess what I'd like them to say is I'm I'm a better professional for having worked with him. My priorities are aligned. I'm um there was a we had a we had a speaker come speak to us years ago and he talked about who packed your parachute. So when it's time for you to jump out of your plane, there are people that helped you pack your parachute to get you ready for when it's your time to jump out of a plane. So I guess I'd like to think that I'm glad he helped pack my parachute for me. That's okay. That's okay. Yeah. So I think I think, you know, just uh prior uh they saw what priorities should be. We created an organization here where I think we have very shared priorities, and I think they're the right priorities, and an output of that, an output of hiring the right people and giving them the right space and training and doing all the things we're trying to do is good results, good financial results. We EBITDA, we talk about EBITDA a whole lot, and that is we talk about it as an output of what we're doing, not as the goal or the or or the or what we're striving for every single day. It's an output. If you do everything right, that comes.

Behzad Rassuli: 1:36:10

Who packed my parachute? Who packed your parachute? Yeah. I love it. Darcy, I can't thank you enough for spending the time with me. I really appreciate it. Thanks for tuning in to another episode of Auto Care on Air. Make sure to subscribe to our podcast so they never miss an episode. And don't forget to leave us a rating and a review. That helps others discover our show. Auto Care on Air is a production of the Auto Care Association, dedicated to advancing the autocare industry and supporting professionals like you. To learn more about the association and initiatives, visit autocare.org.