F.W. Webb: Succession and Business Continuation

Bloodlines & Business

Welcome to the Bloodlines & Business Podcast, with your hosts Jim, Brookes, and Courtney Townsend. For their debut episode, the family behind Townsend Energy sit down with the leader of another major family-owned business: Jeff Pope, owner and president of F.W. Webb. Join the Townsends as they and Jeff discuss Jeff’s path towards taking over the family business, the pitfalls he’s avoided, the philosophies he’s learned, and how it all adds up to ongoing success.

CHAPTERS:

00:02 We don’t make maple syrup 00:26 Intro 01:04 Jim Townsend 01:33 Brookes welcomes Jeff Pope03:34 Caring for customers04:54 Why are your employees so good at their jobs? 06:11 Family goal 06:33 Family governance 08:27 Most challenging family event?11:27 How do you professionalize the business without separating business from family? 13:57 Assigning work roles for family 17:30 Courts’ 4 hours digging a trench18:04 Brookes’ tough day delivering fuel oil19:12 Diversification, the Webb philosophy 22:17 How do you choose what to acquire? 26:28 Thanks 27:40 Jim weighs in

In the first episode of the Bloodlines & Business podcast, hosts Jim, Brookes, and Courtney Townsend are joined by Jeff Pope, owner and president of F.W. Webb. Like Townsend Energy, F.W. Webb is a family-owned business, and Jeff is the third generation to lead the organization.

Jeff introduces himself and explains a little about the F.W. Webb operation. His grandfather bought the company in 1933 and remained president until his passing in 1961, at which point Jeff’s father took over before passing it on to Jeff. F.W. Webb is now a large organization with 3000 employees and over a hundred locations, with distribution covering plumbing, heating, HVAC, sprinkler fittings, and numerous other engineering and construction products.

But even with his family’s almost century in the business, and even with all their success, Jeff maintains the perspective of a small business, believing that F.W. Webb needs to earn the business and loyalty of their clients through reliable performance, no matter the size or location of the clients in question.

Court confirms from personal experience that F.W. Webb does fulfill this mindset, as he has been to a number of different locations and interacted with a number of team members, all of whom embodied the mindset of delivering the best they can for a customer, all day, every day.

Jeff acknowledges that this can be a difficult attitude to maintain across 3000 employees across so many locations. F.W. Webb strategically puts their best face forward with employees who do the best job interacting with customers. Employees with other skills are give their own opportunities to shine elsewhere. For Jeff, this is all a part of staying humble and not believing themselves to be inherently better than anyone else. By playing to each employee’s strengths, it creates the best opportunity to do good work for a customer.

The Townsend team want to know if this is a philosophy that has always existed in the family business, or something that developed over time. The answer is slightly complicated by the fact that Jeff’s grandfather passed away very unexpectedly, making it difficult to judge what legacy he might have intended. But Jeff is certain that both his father and grandfather tried to make sure they left the company better than it was when they took charge, and that has always been Jeff’s goal as well.

This leads to a conversation about one of the regular difficulties of running a family business: Governance. Who gets to be in charge of what? Jeff acknowledges that this can be a touchy subject for many family businesses, but F.W. Webb has never really had to deal with it. When Jeff’s father was in charge, he made sure that Jeff never worked directly under him, and now that Jeff is in charge, his son works at F.W. Webb but with different bosses. While not a formal division of labor, it keeps things simple and creates a clean divide between family and work life.

This results in a conversation about succession in general. When asked if there was ever a point in time where his status as heir-apparent was challenged, Jeff responds that the only time this occurred was after the tragic loss of his eldest son died, only 11 and a half years old. This led to some question as to whether or not the grieving process would take him out of the running for leading the company. But Jeff persisted and overcame all those concerns.

Jeff spends a little time detailing other intricacies of his specific family business situation: How he never felt like the role was automatically his, and so he pushed himself to excel; how his brother also once had a role in the company before departing; and how Jeff’s son is now coming into his own and finding his own footing in the business world.

The Townsends then lead the discussion into the uncomfortable areas of operating a family business that often go under-discussed. There’s the matter of salary and having the conversation that what is fair does not always mean what is equal. There’s the question of determining how to best utilize a family member’s specific skills in the proper role in the company. And there’s the all-important question of where do you actually put a family member who wants to be a part of the business? At what level should they begin?

Jeff’s answers all return to his core principle of never taking anything for granted, and operating from a place of humility and respect. As to the final point, he strongly advocates for starting at the bottom and being forced to work your way up. His own first job was a summer job in the basement of F.W. Webb’s Boston branch. Dirt floor basement, stacking cast iron flanges, and a ceiling so low he could not even stand up straight. The end result being that by the time Jeff took over the company, he’d worked almost every single position in it. This leads to the Townsends reflecting on their own experiences working at the different levels of Townsend Energy, including the misadventures that ultimately gave them an even greater appreciation for their company and everyone who works there.

As a final question, Jeff is asked about the diversification of F.W. Webb, which has a broader scope and range of businesses than other comparable company. Again, Jeff returns to his mantra of humility and self-awareness. Knowing that F.W. Webb is only one of many companies and that there are so many other competitors and avenues for revenue out there emboldens him to pursue things that might seem out of step with F.W. Webb’s general products. He would not have guessed when he took over the company that maple syrup would be a massive piece of his business, but selling the valves and piping, and containers for maple syrup producers in New England has proven to be big business. Being curious and being aware that there is always more to be learning and doing, garners surprising results.

He then talks in greater detail about the ins and outs of F.W. Webb’s various services and products, and the evolutions the company has undergone during his time.

The Townsends say goodbye to Jeff, and then wrap up the episode with discussion among themselves, fleshing out topics from the interview with Jeff with more anecdotes of personal experience. They reflect on the ideas and strategies that Jeff discussed and how they relate back to their own company and relationships within it.

Jim concludes the episode by thanking Jeff, then offers his own big takeaways from their interview. Jim notes that as a customer of F.W. Webb, he knows firsthand that Jeff’s philosophies are actually practiced, and he has seen how the company has only continued to grow and thrive under him. He ends the episode with a quote from Winston Churchill: "Define success as moving from one failure to another without losing your enthusiasm."

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Supporting Documents

F.W. Webb website: Plumbing, Heating, HVAC & Industrial Supplies | F.W. Webb (fwwebb.com)

F.W. Webb Wikipedia entry: F.W. Webb Company - Wikipedia

Jeff Pope LinkedIn page: Jeff Pope - President - F.W. Webb Co. | LinkedIn

Interview with Jeff Pope; Pivoting During Pandemic: How F.W. Webb is Pivoting Business Through the Pandemic - Modern Distribution Management (mdm.com)

F.W. Webb Ranked No. 3 by Boston Business Journal on List of Family-Owned Businesses in Massachusetts: F.W. Webb Ranked No. 3 by Boston Business Journal | phcppros