436: Garry Ridge—Any Dumbass Can Do It

The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe

Society & Culture, History

4.8 • 39.1K Ratings

🗓️ 13 May 2025

⏱️ 68 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Once named one of Inc. magazine’s 10 most admired CEOs, Garry led WD-40 for 25 years. At that time, his leadership and positive corporate culture grew WD-40 into one of the world's most recognized and well-loved brands. In this episode, Garry discusses how he achieved this and why he detailed it in his book, Any Dumbass Can Do It.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey guys, it's Mike Rowe. This is the way I heard it. Episode number. Oh, right. We don't do that anymore.
0:07.9	You know, we could. 400 something at least. It's like, yeah, whatever. It's an, yeah, it's an episode.
0:14.1	All right. With a number. Good. Thank you, Chuck. Undisclosed at this moment. I'll tell you what
0:18.7	matters is the name. The name of the episode is fantastic.
0:21.6	It's called Any Dumbass Can Do It.
0:23.6	And it could apply to podcasting.
0:25.5	It could apply to hosting.
0:27.0	It could apply to virtually everything.
0:29.4	But in this case, it applies to running a company.
0:33.1	Right.
0:34.2	Gary Ridge is the author of a terrific book of the same title.
0:37.8	He's very Australian, as he will prove shortly.
0:41.6	And we've just had a great conversation about his extraordinary impact and run over at a little company called WD40.
0:52.8	Yeah.
0:53.4	I mean, the company itself, you could talk for hours about.
0:56.9	They've got just a couple of products.
0:58.7	They totally dominate the market.
1:00.2	But the employee satisfaction and engagement levels.
1:06.2	Very high.
1:07.1	Very high.
1:08.2	Suspiciously high.
1:09.3	Yes.
	...

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