Built It. Bought It. Grew It: Bruce Broxterman’s Billion-Dollar Valve Playbook (Richards Industrials)
In This Episode
In 1980, Bruce Broxterman was a high school English teacher and coach who had qualified for food stamps when his first child was born. He answered a newspaper ad for an inside sales job at Richards Industrials, a Cincinnati, Ohio valve manufacturer — and turned that sales-desk seat into one of the most respected careers in the valve industry, eventually buying the company he had started at and leading it until its sale.
In Episode 2 of the Fully Open Podcast, recorded at the Valve Manufacturers Association, host Gilbert Welsford Jr., third-generation valve entrepreneur and the founder of ValveMan.com, sits down with Broxterman, a family friend who has known Gil since he was a baby. The conversation is a masterclass in industrial leadership: why the CEO should still sell, why relationships beat networking, and how three simple questions define a company’s culture.
These are lessons earned over roughly 3 million air miles and a management-team buyout.
Key Takeaways
- Nothing happens until something is sold. Broxterman believes the CEO should be willing to jump into the sales effort personally because it signals to the entire organization that selling the product is the company’s primary focus.
- Technical depth builds confidence, but it isn’t the job. Knowing he could size a Mark 60 gave Broxterman instinctive command of the shop floor, yet he had to learn to step back and lead the process, not the product.
- Relationships outperform networking. Train your reps, make joint sales calls, have dinner with them, and go to their kids’ ball games. Genuine relationships earn your product line more of a rep’s time “than you may even deserve.”
- Culture comes down to three questions every employee asks of their leader: Do you care about me? Are you committed to excellence? Can I trust you?
- Goals must live in the open. Richards set written, measurable objectives annually, reviewed them monthly, cascaded them to every department, and reported progress to the whole company in quarterly cafeteria meetings.
- Leaving your industry can make you better at it. Seven years running a printing division at Miami Systems taught Broxterman to lead through people and process instead of product expertise.
- Work ethic still matters. Workplace norms have shifted from mandatory Saturdays to flexible hours, but in Broxterman’s words, “there’s no replacement for work ethic and effort.”
From the Sales Desk to Owning the Company
Broxterman’s path is a case study in learning a business from the inside out. He started on the Richards Industrials sales desk and was tapped by founder Gilbert Richards to build the company’s international distribution. Broxterman then spent decades training reps, visiting customers, and setting up channels around the world. After seven years away at Miami Systems, he returned as president in 2007. And in 2009, he and three other members of the management team bought the company from Gil Richards, holding it until its sale around 2019–2020.
That product-first education made him a famously technical chief executive — one who could still size the company’s valves from memory. He sees it as both a gift and a trap:
“I really, as a CEO, had no business sizing a Mark 60. I couldn’t help myself but do it. But that was not really the role that I had.”
The knowledge gave him “incredible confidence” walking the shop floor . He could glance at a body being machined and know it was a 4-inch Mark 67 in carbon steel . But real leadership meant stepping back to see the whole business.
Relationships, Not Networking
Some of the episode’s best wisdom traces back to Gil Richards himself. Gilbert recalls a ride-along with the late founder, who dismissed the standard business-school advice in one line:
“Gilbert, I don’t care about networking. I create relationships. And that’s all that matters.”
Broxterman lived that philosophy across his 3 million miles on Delta. His instruction to regional sales managers was to become one of the top three product lines every manufacturers’ rep carries — not through incentives alone, but through complete, genuine relationships:
“You want to solve problems for them, look at applications — but you want to have dinner with them. You want to go to their kids’ ball games.”
In an era of emails and text messages, both men argue the relationship side of industrial sales is harder, and more valuable, than ever.
A Culture Built on Three Questions
Borrowing a framework from a Notre Dame football coach, Broxterman says every employee is silently asking three things about the person they report to:
“Do you care about me? Are you committed to excellence? And can I trust you?”
Each question runs deep. Caring means the right working conditions, the right training, and genuine interest in where someone’s career goes next. Trust means integrity and honest business for customers. And excellence matters because “everybody wants to be around a winner” — if the CEO doesn’t want the very best, why is anyone there? Richards revisited those three questions at every company meeting.
Goals That Never Sit in a Drawer
Broxterman ran Richards on a classic management-by-objectives system: 8 to 12 written, measurable goals per manager, set annually in whiteboard sessions, kept in a clear-covered folder that hit the table at every one-on-one, and reviewed monthly. Departmental goals fed company goals, and progress was shared with the entire organization — shop floor included — at quarterly all-company meetings.
“The worst thing that you can do is set these goals and then stick them in a drawer somewhere for the year, and then at the end of the year pull them out and say, ‘How’d we do?’”
Gilbert’s takeaway: he’s adding company goals to ValveMan’s quarterly “State of the Union” meetings — a change any industrial leader can copy this quarter.
About Bruce Broxterman
Bruce Broxterman is the former CEO and co-owner of Richards Industrials, the Cincinnati-based manufacturer behind products like the Mark-series control valves and regulators discussed in this episode. He joined the company’s inside sales desk in 1980, built its international distribution while logging roughly 3 million miles on Delta. And after a seven-year stretch in senior management at printing manufacturer Miami Systems, he returned as president in 2007 and bought the company with three fellow managers in 2009. Since selling the business around 2019–2020, he has remained involved as a board member and advisor.
Hear every story in full — watch the complete episode above, subscribe on YouTube so you never miss a conversation, and browse all episodes at the Fully Open Podcast hub.
Read the Full Transcript
Transcript is auto-generated from the episode audio and lightly edited for readability. Tap a timestamp to jump the video to that moment.
We qualified for food stamps when our first child was born. Gil Richards says it in a very Gil Richards way: 'Gilbert, I don't care about networking. I create relationships.' What better person to be the best salesperson than the CEO? I logged about 3 million miles on Delta traveling all over the world. People have three questions they want to know about the person that they're reporting to: Do you care about me? Are you committed to excellence? Can I trust you? Welcome to the show. I'm Gil Welsford, third-generation valve entrepreneur and founder of ValveMan.com. Join me as I hear stories, learn wisdom, and get industry insights. This is more than valves. It's business, legacy, and resilience. Let's get into it. Hi, and welcome to the podcast. My name is Gil Welsford. I'm here at the Valve Manufacturers Association talking with a very, very good friend who has literally
known me since I was a baby. His name is Bruce Broxterman. He has been a great friend of our family, and we've been able to hang out together socially and work in business for a very, very long time. So I'm really excited to have Bruce on the show. Bruce, thank you so much for coming on. Great to be here, Gilbert. So I would love to just start out — maybe you can tell us a little bit about your career, sort of how you started. I know you spent a long time at Richards Industrials, which we're going to get into. You spent a little bit of time away from Richards Industrials, and then you came back and ended up buying the company. So if you could just give us a little bit of the story of your career. Yeah, just very fortunate to have landed where I did. I actually came out of college and started out as a high school English teacher and coach for a
few years, and I think we qualified for food stamps when our first child was born. So I started looking for something else, and answered an ad in the newspaper for inside sales for Richards Industrials, and started off on the sales desk in — gosh, it's been so long ago — I think it was 1980, and learned the business really from the sales desk, interacting with customers like your grandfather and many others. And in the early '80s, the owner of the company, Gilbert Richards, came to me and said, we need someone that can start traveling overseas to try to develop our business internationally. And I jumped in on that and wound up logging — I guess I logged about 3 million miles on Delta, traveling all over the world and visiting distribution, setting up distribution, seeing customers, doing
training — all the things that a regional manager, kind of vice president of sales, does for an industrial company. And that's what I did for many, many years, and eventually moved into an executive position with the company. In the early '90s I left for about seven years and went into a different industry altogether, into a kind of senior management position. And in 2007, Gil Richards and I reconnected, and I came back to the company and served as the president of the company, running the operations for all of the divisions of the company at that time. And in 2009, we came to an agreement where myself and three other members of the management team bought the company, and we held the
company until — it's probably 2019 or 2020 when I finally sold the company — and I stayed on for a year, and then I moved on from the company. I'm still involved on the board there and I do some advising, but for the most part, now I'm out of the everyday operations of the valve works. That's great. So 3 million miles — I feel like I've only seen that in movies. Do you get certain special awards for logging 3 million miles on Delta? They treated me pretty well for a while there, but now that I don't travel nearly as much, I don't get as much attention. But yeah, if there was a chance that I was going to miss a flight, they had somebody in a golf cart take me across the runway and make sure I got to my flight. So,
it was pretty special. That's cool. So the seven years that you spent away from Richards Industrials — it was Miami Systems, right? That's right. Miami Systems, which was a multi-division local company in Cincinnati, Ohio. They were a manufacturer, but a different type of manufacturer, totally different industry. They were in the printing industry, and they had operations all up and down the East Coast. And what I did was I managed a region for them from the sales standpoint. But then after about a year, they put me in charge of a division in Vermont that did labels and plastic cards and sold those internationally — which is kind of why they looked at me, because there was a need for someone who understood the international side of the business. And I would commute to Vermont, leave on
a Sunday night or a Monday morning and come back on a Thursday. I did that probably three weeks out of the month for — gosh, I think it was three or four years — in the 2000s, to be involved with that division, which was a great experience. It really kind of prepped me for being a leader operationally, in addition to being a sales leader. So from my standpoint, that was a great time in my career. It's interesting, because I've heard this concept that people come up with the best innovations when they have expertise in two completely random pieces of life. So for instance, having expertise in printing — and I'm assuming printing maybe like baseball cards or something like that — and then valves. Do you feel like having those two experiences helped create any
very unique innovations? Or did that time at Miami Systems help — how did that prepare you to be the president of Richards? You know, it's a great question, because it does — I wouldn't say it's so much two different industries, although they were completely different industries. It was two different organizations that did things differently. At Richards, we are very strongly involved with manufacturers' reps and a distribution sales channel that is independent from the company, and at Miami Systems it was a totally different structure. We had direct salespeople all over the country. And so instead of interacting with independent reps, you were interacting with company employees and structuring compensation plans based on them being direct employees,
incentive plans. It was a totally different environment in terms of motivating and recognizing your sales team. And to me, that was an invaluable piece of the puzzle as I developed as a manager and an overseer of business operations. And also different cultures — you learn from that. The culture at that organization was totally different than the culture at Richards. And in the end, you come out of all of that as a blend of all of those experiences, I think. And that forms you as the manager that you become, or the leader that you become. I felt like I grew tremendously in the time that I spent away from the company at Richards. I would say this: when I was at Richards,
because of where I started in the company, I really understood the product. I knew how it was sold. I knew how it was applied. I knew what our customers wanted, the applications. I knew the value systems that they were looking for from the product — what they were trying to get out of the product and out of us as a manufacturer. At Miami Systems, it was a little different experience. I never became that product expert. So I didn't focus so much on the product side of it. I relied on my sales team to do that. And I learned to step back and become just more of a director, or kind of an organizer of the effort, and focus on the process rather than the product so much. And I think that made me a better overall leader, again, because it was a different experience. I was used to jumping in, hands-on — give me the details of your application and I'll figure out
what you need — which I've always done in the valve works. But in that printing side of the business, I didn't have that tribal knowledge. I didn't have that base of understanding of how — but my people did. So I relied on them and leaned on them, and I focused on things that would help them be more effective in their work, and I think that made me a better leader. That's really interesting, because something that I've always thought of Bruce Broxterman — when I think of Bruce in the valve world — is you were an extremely technical CEO. You can size a Mark 60, you can size a Mark 80 — you know exactly — and when you're doing a ride-along, you can talk about the product. And I can only assume it's because of how you started in the business and grew a lot of your career in application support. Do you think that was helpful, or do you think
that was a hindrance, actually, because you almost got into the weeds too much sometimes as a president specifically? You know, from the standpoint of your question, I think a blend is helpful. I really do. I think having both of those experiences is helpful. You're right — you can get into the weeds too much. I really, as a CEO, had no business sizing a Mark 60, as you said. I couldn't help myself but do it. But that was not really the role that I had. I needed to step back from that part of the business and be able to look at things from a different level, a different viewpoint, further back. But that being said, having that knowledge gave me incredible confidence in the business. When I was walking through the shop, I knew what
kind of product they were working on in the assembly department. Or if somebody in the machine shop was machining a body, I knew that was a body for a 4-inch Mark 67 in carbon steel, and those things were just kind of instinctive — they just kind of happened in my head. I walked through a printing plant, and yeah, I could see what product was coming off the press, but how that press was working and where that product was going to wind up, I wasn't always really comfortable with. And as a result, I never had that full, total confidence in looking at the business from a leadership standpoint. I think the blend of the two has really been a big plus in my career, and I think it's been invaluable to me as I've developed and grown. It's something that I struggle
with a lot, because when we started ValveMan 15 years ago, I did the order processing, I did the sales calls, I did quotes, I did product uploads, I did blog content creation. I was literally — what do they call it, chief cook and bottle washer or whatever — I was doing it all. And now that we've grown a sales team and we have a really amazing team — we have a director of email marketing, we have a director of organic SEO, a director of pay-per-click, we have — now it'll be four sales folks, we have a sales manager — it's comfortable for me to jump on the phone with the sales guys and just sell product. I love it, and it's so much fun. Because at the end of the day, we're not really selling. We're just helping customers and building relationships. And I love that. I think it's so
much fun. But sometimes when we're doing sales trainings, I'll be listening in on the calls, and I just want to hop in, because I find it so much fun. And I actually think that's a bit of a detriment to me — that I'm so willing to get into, I'll call it the mud, that sometimes I don't look at things from a 10,000-foot level. Yeah, and I think you do have to catch yourself. But at the same time, one of the things that I've learned — Gil Richards would speak to this at times with me — is that what better person to be the best salesperson, the biggest sales effort in the company, than the CEO? I mean, nothing happens until something is sold. And if there's one primary focus in a company, it's got to be selling the product. And if the CEO is not willing to jump in and do that on occasion, I think that is kind of an indicator
to the rest of the organization that what we're turning out in the plant is really important and that sales thing is just all kind of fluff. Well, the bottom line is, they're all important. They all have to happen effectively for you to be successful. But in the beginning, I always have stated — and still feel very strongly — that if somebody doesn't go out and sell something, nothing happens. And so we really have to be focused on that sales process and make sure it's successful. And then all the other things have to fall in place as well. You can't be successful if you're not delivering product on time. You can't be successful if you're not collecting your bills. Your engineering team has to make good decisions and be able to design good products. Your marketing team has to be able to understand what's going on in the marketplace in terms of price and product and new product development and so on. All those things have to
happen. But in the end, if somebody's not out selling it, the other stuff doesn't really matter. Yeah, it's a great point. And especially for a business like ours — we're in distribution. That is our business: sales and marketing. We're really a sales and marketing organization. But the more you can do of those other things — I mean, you're not actually manufacturing product typically, but you may be assembling things, you may be consolidating things — but you do have to be effective in customer service. You have to be effective on the engineering side of it, the application side of it. You have to be effective on the process side, in terms of paying your bills, collecting your bills, and so on. So you're in the same challenge as everybody else. And I think you're right — I think you're going to be judged in the end on how effective you are selling the product. So that's why I have this mission in
our business that I talk to our team about every day — and I talk about this, people hear it all the time — our goal as a company is to create the best B2B customer experience in the world. And it starts — I chat with our warehouse team about it, I chat with our order processing team about it, I chat with our sales team about it. Everybody throughout the entire organization knows our goal is to create the best B2B customer experience in the world. And I think you're right — it's holistic. It's the spokes of the wheel, and if one spoke isn't firing on all cylinders, the wheel isn't going to move properly. Yeah, and your end product's not as good. It really isn't. And you have a special — in today's marketplace and today's world of
technology, you all have a much more difficult challenge, in that I think the relationship side of the business is critical, and you have that obstacle of sending emails and text messages and not having face-to-face conversations — or, for that matter, even telephone conversations like we used to have in the day — to help develop relationships. Because I always said to my regional sales managers: we want to be one of the top three product lines that each of those manufacturers' reps takes into the marketplace. And when you go in and spend time with a rep organization like the Welsford company, you want to have a complete experience with them. You want to train them. You want to go out and make joint sales calls. You want to solve problems for them, look at applications — but you want to have dinner with them.
You want to go to their kids' ball games. You want to have a relationship much more so than just a business relationship — a connectivity — so that when you leave that territory, that salesperson is going to spend an inordinate amount of time on your product line, more than you may even deserve, because of that relationship that you've forged with them. And I always felt good about it, because the relationships were genuine. It wasn't that I was just trying to woo somebody over so they would spend time on my product line. I enjoyed being with the people that I worked with, and I enjoyed having them as friends. So it was a total win-win, in my opinion, for all of us that were involved. We had these relationships that were personal, and the connectivity was strong, but at the same time, we were having success from the standpoint of the business. So, it's so funny that you bring this up, because it reminds me of a piece of
wisdom that I was given 15 years ago, and it's by a guy that you've mentioned a couple of times: Gil Richards. No relation, by the way — Gil Welsford, Gil Richards — we just happen to both be in the valve industry. Side note: one time my dad, Gil Senior, myself, Gil Richards Senior, and Gil Richards III, his son, were all having dinner together, the four of us, and so there were four Gils sitting at the table, which is kind of funny. But okay — so about 15 years ago, after you had bought the business from Gil Richards — for those that don't know, Gil Richards was the founder of Richards Industrials, and Bruce bought the company from him. He was a very, very good friend of my grandfather and my dad, and just an amazing guy that a lot of people in the valve industry look up to, or did look up to. He's since
passed, but I had the privilege of spending some time with him after he retired down in Florida. And I remember doing this ride-along with him. We were driving to some restaurant — it was about an hour away from his home. My dad and I were both visiting him and Mary for a few days, and Dad said to me, 'Gilbert, why don't you ride with Mr. Richards?' And I remember almost every part of that conversation so vividly, because I didn't have a lot of time with Gil Richards, but I had about this one-hour ride-along, and I remember just peppering him with questions. I was like 20 years old, and I'm just trying to learn so much from this guy that I heard so much about. And I was asking him about going to business school, because I believe he had gone to Harvard — Harvard MBA, right? Yes.
And I said, 'Man, the networking must have been amazing.' And he says it in a very Gil Richards way. He goes, 'Gilbert, I don't care about networking. I create relationships. And that's all that matters.' And that was such a — you know, when you're 20 years old, you're told network, network, network, network — hand out your business card, blah blah blah. And it's true — I have stacks of business cards. I don't know who these people are. I talked to them five years ago; I'm never going to call them. But having that relationship — you and I, Bruce: when I was 16 years old, I remember going to Richards Industrials and assembling valves, and afterwards you took me out and we went to your grandson's soccer game. I still remember that. It was 20 years ago. Yeah. And those are the types of moments that create really long-term relationships. So I just appreciate that advice that he gave me, and I'm sure you were given similar
advice. Absolutely. That's where I learned that. All of these things were things that I gleaned from my frequent, many long trips and meetings with Gil, and I very much learned my philosophy of business and business relationships from him, in a lot of conversations like what you had. So, to talk about the relationship with Gil Richards a little bit — I'm sure he taught you work ethic and building a strong team and decision-making and creating a good structure and that kind of stuff. But man, one thing that I remember of Gil Richards — and this goes back to when he was still the owner of the business — work ethic, man. I mean, that guy just worked and worked and worked and worked. And there was a culture of coming in on Saturdays and
working. Yeah. And he was so intense in his work. And I feel like today the work environment is just very different — it's much more balanced. How do you feel like his work ethic compared to, I'll call it, the work ethic of the modern-day businessman? What do you think about that difference — the culture of, hey, everybody comes in on Saturdays and works half a day, to everybody wants to leave at four, have these flexible hours, or whatever that may be? It has evolved, and it was one of the more difficult struggles that I had as a leader, because I was the CEO of Richards when all of that kind of change began to unfold, and it was hard for me. I was a guy that came in — gosh, the first 20 years of my career, I worked
every Saturday. Besides the travel, when you were in town, that was a work day. And I learned that from Gil, and that was an expectation, not an option. And it has changed. And I think having the patience and, I guess, the intelligence to deal with that effectively — and make sure you understand that people do have personal lives, and they do have to have multiple facets in their lives; they have to be able to not only be effective at the workplace but be effective dads and husbands and wives and daughters — it does give you perspective. I did see a quote — I have growing grandsons; I have 19 grandkids, and some of them are starting to — one's a senior in college. The one whose soccer game you went to is now a senior in college, and some are
getting ready to go off to college. And I sent them a quote that I saw the other day. It said, 'If you never want to worry about the cost of something, don't worry about the number of hours that it takes to get the job done. Don't ever count hours if you don't want to have to count money.' And Gil said to me, 'It's not about the money, it's what you can do with it. And if you are willing to work hard, the money will come, and you don't have to be obsessed with it.' And I would say that, looking back, that's very true. When you're young and trying to buy that first house, and you have kids coming along, and you try to make sure you give them the life that you want, it's really hard not to look at the scoreboard in terms of dollars and cents. But as you get older, it's really about family and relationships. And what you hope you do is you work effectively enough so
that you can focus on that and not have to be obsessed with making a living and paying the bills. The bills will be paid if you live the life that you need to live. That being said, there's no replacement for work ethic and effort and being willing to make the sacrifices that it takes to be good. Yeah, that's really good wisdom there, Bruce. Thank you. So, I'm going to take the conversation a little bit different, because you had given me some advice about when you're growing a business — which we're working on doing, taking on this third-generation company and trying to grow it just as you did at Richards. You said: set specific goals, review them regularly, measure progress, adjust, and adapt as necessary. And I'd love to double down on that a little bit. So, first off, could you give me an example of maybe
a way that you did that? And was it like a 10,000-foot-level goal? Are you setting really small — I guess I normally call them benchmarks, like quarterly benchmarks? And then also, who do you decide is in the room and in the conversation when you're setting those goals, when you're reviewing them, when you're measuring the progress, when you're adjusting, and when you're adapting? Yeah. I always tried to set two — I had two sets of objectives. One was my own personal objectives, from the standpoint of my career and my growth as an individual. But then, more importantly, I had the set of objectives for the business, and we laid those out. Those were always in writing, and those were formed through face-to-face, whiteboard, blackboard brainstorming sessions with the management team. And
that group varied in size, anywhere from myself and the three other owners, to then we would fold that out to the six to eight other key managers in the company. And it was a process that I learned — gosh, early in my career. It's an old process — it was called management by objectives. And it was important that you set the goals for the business that were objectively manageable — or, I'm sorry, measurable. And it really is where that advice that I gave you came from. Make sure that you set specific goals, that they are measurable, that you regularly look at them and understand how you're doing against your objective, and then change and adapt accordingly as you progress through the year. And we set those goals annually. We reviewed them monthly.
Every time I sat down — for each of my management team, I had a packet that was contained in a clear-covered folder, and on the front of that packet were the 8 to 10 to 12 objectives that we had. And every time I sat down with them, that was on the table, and we talked about those objectives at some point in the conversation. And then what you need to try to do is draw that individual member of your team into those objectives. What is the role they play? What is the impact that they can have on those objectives, and how is that coming? It's a grind of a process as you go through it. And you made a good point earlier — but at the same time, you've got to push that back and make sure you're not just looking at it from a day-to-day standpoint, but also from the overall health of the organization and where
you're headed. Yeah, the sales goal for this year is really important, but what do we see five years from now in terms of the size of the company and the growth that we're going to achieve? It's got to be a combination of the two. Somehow you have to bring the conversation in so that it covers not only that six-month set of objectives, but also: what is the long-term picture we have for the organization? Where are we going? And would you publish those long-term objectives — I'll call it public, like for everyone? Absolutely — for the team. And then we would have company-wide meetings — it kind of varied, dependent on what was happening with the business, but certainly quarterly — where we would bring all the people in from the shop, everybody from the inside sales group, the engineering team, everybody — really the entire organization — into our cafeteria, and we would sit down and say, 'Okay,
here's how we're doing. Let's talk about it. We as a company have certain goals, and here's where we are against those goals' — so that everybody felt like they were a part of that process and knew how we were doing. The worst thing that you can do is set these goals and then stick them in a drawer somewhere for the year, and then at the end of the year pull them out and say, 'How'd we do?' It has to be a live, living document — a living process — that everybody is involved in and at least knows about. And then we tried to kick it down, so that the folks on the shop floor had a set of objectives that fed into the overall company objectives. And you try to do that at every stop along the way. Every department has a set of their departmental goals that feed into what the overall company goals are. And I'll laugh when I say
this: meanwhile, you have to do all that without making people feel like they're spending their entire day at a meeting talking about objectives rather than getting their work done. So it's a balance. Sure. Well, it's funny — this is a full-circle conversation, because it actually talks about how every single part of your organization is so important for the growth of the organization. So it's not just the sales team, it's not just the assemblers, it's not just the warehousing team — it's everybody. But I think each person having goals that they know feed up to the overall company vision probably does help people understand that their job is really important. It does two things. It helps them understand what their part is to play in this whole process that we're going through. Plus, it creates value. It makes them feel like
they're a part of something bigger than: hey, I'm showing up and I'm running a machine for eight hours, or I'm assembling valves for eight, or I'm answering the phone for so long, or processing emails — whatever it happens to be. We always talked about culture so much, and — I really stole this from — your mama will like this — I stole it from a Notre Dame football coach, and he always talked about the culture at Notre Dame football. My mom went to Notre Dame. Yeah, I know. And the conversation always went like this: people have three questions they want to know about the person that they're reporting to. Do you care about me? Are you committed to excellence? And can I trust you? Those are the three questions. But those questions are much broader than that. Do you care about me? Well, do you care about me as an individual, and how I'm doing today? But do you care about where I am in my career process? Where —
do you care about me as far as whether I'm working in the right conditions in my position? Do you care that I've got the right training to do my job effectively? Do you care where my career is going? This is not my last stop — I have another two or three stops ahead of me. Are you thinking about those things for me? 'Can I trust you?' is obvious. Do you have integrity? Are we in this business just to make money, or do you have values that you're trying to follow? And do you have a commitment to being an honest company, giving your customers honest business? And then the 'committed to excellence' — everybody wants to win. Everybody wants to be around a winner. And if the coach — if the CEO — is not committed to excellence and doesn't want the very best, then why are we here? So I think all of those three simple questions evolve into an entire kind of look back on the
culture of the company and the nature of the leadership that's in place. So we always talked about those three questions a lot with all of our people, and at every one of our meetings. Wow. Thank you so much. That is amazing wisdom. I have like a page of notes from this conversation, and thankfully it'll be recorded, so I can review it again. But I really, really appreciate this, Bruce. One takeaway that I got from this: I do — we call it the State of the Union — a meeting quarterly with our team, and I'm always sharing with them what are the project wins that we had last quarter, what are we working on this quarter, and what's happening next quarter — sort of like projects. But what I'm going to add into this State of the Union is our goals. And that's something that Jason, my brother, and I are working through right now — our company
goals. And as you said, it is a very arduous process. We're five meetings in and we're still not necessarily there yet. Yeah. But I think having those quarterly benchmarks is really important. So that's something that I'm going to include in my State of the Union. So thank you for that. Sure. Well, Bruce, I really appreciate your time. This has been such a valuable conversation. I hope everybody is taking a ton of notes, because Bruce Broxterman has had an extremely successful career in the valve industry, built — continued and grew — an incredible business, and it's something that you should be super, super proud of. And Bruce, I just feel so blessed to be able to have you be on our team and continue to be a
friend and a mentor that we can look up to. So thank you for that. Gil, you're very gracious, and thank you. I'm humbled by that set of compliments. I enjoyed the chance to revisit some of these thoughts that aren't at the top of my mind anymore, but it's still very important to me, and I still value it incredibly. And I applaud you for taking the approach of focusing on these kinds of things. Not everybody — a lot of guys and women, a lot of them are just looking at the numbers and checking the financials to see how we're doing — but you're looking at it from a much broader standpoint and looking at bigger questions and bigger things that will help your business become successful. And I applaud you for that. Well, thank you. We make decisions based off of growing our business for the fourth generation, which I think changes the decision-making criteria quite a bit. We're not like
a private equity company, so we're not just trying to build our bottom line. We're really trying to — I say, build like a pyramid, because you can't knock a pyramid down — instead of building a massive skyscraper. But all of this, Bruce, is really, really helpful. So thank you so much again. And next time we are in Cincinnati, I will be sure to treat you to a nice dinner. Yeah, I enjoy being with you anywhere. Absolutely. All right, Bruce, have a great day. Thank you so much. All the best. Thanks for listening to Fully Open. If something stood out or sparked a thought, I would love to hear it. See you on the next one. [Music]
Frequently Asked Questions
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Your Host
Gil Welsford
Founder and CEO of ValveMan, a B2B industrial valve distributor, and a third-generation leader of a family business founded in 1965. Gil is also the host of the Fully Open Valve Podcast. A valve nerd from around 4 years old, he's spent his career helping engineers, contractors, and facility teams source the right valves for the job.
About the Guest
Bruce Broxterman
Bruce Broxterman joined Richards Industrials on the inside sales desk in 1980 and spent decades building the manufacturer’s international business, logging roughly 3 million miles on Delta. After seven years in senior management at Miami Systems, he returned as president in 2007 and, in 2009, bought the company with three other members of the management team, leading it until its sale around 2019–2020. He remains involved as a board member and advisor.
