In the news: Ron Rock featured on Radio America’s Executive Leaders Podcast

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Herb Cohen [00:00:09] We’re back. You’re listening to Executive Leaders Radio talk show host Herb Cohen like to introduce Ron Roth, CEO and co-founder of Microshare. Ron, Ron, what is Microshare? What are you guys doing?

Ron Rock [00:00:20] Hey, Herb, we are a global we are a global technology company. We put sensors in buildings that produce data that make the building safe for employees to come back to work, create cost efficiencies, and help save the planet with carbon emissions.

Herb Cohen [00:00:34] And how large or how small is the team and how do you get a job with this company?

Ron Rock [00:00:39] I’m the co-founder of Microshare. It’s my sixth startup, six time IBM employee number one. We’re now 60 people and growing already.

Herb Cohen [00:00:47] And where you’re from originally, how many brothers and sisters and where are you in the pecking order?

Ron Rock [00:00:51] I am the oldest of three. I have two younger sisters, one of them a year and three days younger. So Irish twins, they call them. And we’re out of a small town suburb outside of Philadelphia.

Herb Cohen [00:01:02] And 8 to 14, what kind of stuff are you up to?

Ron Rock [00:01:05] 8 to 14? I was really messing around with models, building engines for airplanes, model airplanes, tearing bicycles apart, always tinkering down in my dad’s basement or out in the garage.

Herb Cohen [00:01:18] Mm hmm. And how young were you when you started your first business?

Ron Rock [00:01:22] My very first business was was selling shower enclosures, custom built shower enclosures down at the beaches of New Jersey, had a business called Sand Trapped, had to physically make the fliers, go to the library, copy them on a copy machine, hand them out the old fashioned way and get people to agree to let us build the shower enclosure.

Herb Cohen [00:01:43] And you mentioned that after you started that business, you started working at a couple of restaurants. What did you do different than the other kids who worked in the restaurants?

Ron Rock [00:01:50] So I started out in restaurants in as a busboy, and then I went back into the kitchen cooking and then I was a waiter. And consistently, no matter where I was, I ended up being the number one guy. I would make more tips than anybody else on the floor. One time working at Denny’s, I cooked on a mother’s Day Sunday. You’re pretty much.

Herb Cohen [00:02:09] Speaker, Matthew.

Herb Cohen [00:02:12] But Ron, most. Most kids are happy riding their bikes. How young were you when you were taking it apart? You know, when ten speed bikes first came out, I was about ten years old, ten speed bikes came out. And they were so complicated. People were scared to death of that mechanism in the back. And when they didn’t work, I would just start taking them apart and helping fix them. What. What did you enjoy about taking them apart and fixing them? It’s really cool seeing how something works. Being not afraid to just take it apart and figure out if you can get it back together and use all the same parts of it. So what’s taking things apart and putting them back together have to do with what Microshare is doing. At the end of the day, it’s all about innovation. It’s all about driving complex things and putting them all together. And so if you can just take anything, no matter how complex it, you’re ready to go.

Herb Cohen [00:03:02] David. Who do you think you’re more like, your mother or your father?

Ron Rock [00:03:07] I got my technical skills from my dad. He was he went to drag for father was boys so raised in an institution. He learned how to do anything. My mother was the youngest of eight in Fairmount. Philadelphia, Irish, Philadelphia cop. So big personality on one side. Lots of introvert technical skills on the other.

Ron Rock [00:03:28] Kids.

Herb Cohen [00:03:30] Ron, you came up with a really great idea at 16 and managed to actually start a viable business. What did you learn at that age in that business that you’re taking into your business now? It seems so simple. How hard can it be? Just build an enclosure for a shower. It was really hard. I learned that no matter how simple an idea may be, it’s going to be more complicated, more expensive, more difficult, and it’s going to require a lot of effort to make it successful. Caleb Ryan, you lived in a small town, well known family. I get the sense you couldn’t really hide when you’re running around town out there. Well, my father was a hairdresser and it was attached to our home, the beauty salon. And so think about this. Every woman in the community that went there. The minute I walked out the door, everybody knew what Ron Rock was doing. Most of the time that was good. But every now and then that would create challenges. So every now and again, you would get told on they would run around the barber shop and all around the town. So what did that teach you about making sure you do things the right way? You know, it matters. You need to pay attention to your reputation. You need to get things right. You always have to worry about how people are going to perceive what you’re doing. That’s just life.

Herb Cohen [00:04:42] Mm hmm.

Herb Cohen [00:04:43] Jim Ron, you mentioned you and your two younger sisters worked in your father’s hair salon. What kind of things were you doing with your sisters there? So we had to do chores, and one of the things we had to do was clean the beauty salon every Sunday night. Shop was closed Sundays and Mondays. And so cleaning the floor of a beauty salon. Not easy to do. Hairspray. Lots of hard, mucky, sticky stuff. So while your hands and knees scrubbing, mopping, cleaning up. So that was part of our weekly chores. What lessons did you learn from doing those chores again? Responsibility. My parents, my dad especially always said, Ron, you can have anything you want. You’ve just got to pay for it. You have to pay for it. So we we had to do the work to get the money, to get the things that we wanted to do, whether it be a new ten speed bike or taking your girlfriend at 14 to the movies.

Herb Cohen [00:05:32] Mm hmm. Caleb.

Herb Cohen [00:05:34] Ron, you’ve built six businesses like you mentioned earlier, but you told us about 12 years ago you had to rebuild something much more personal. What happened? Three days before Christmas, one of our Christmas trees caught on fire. The high that day in Philadelphia was 20 degrees. So it was freezing cold. We had a massive home built in 1840, burned down. We were in the house. My son, my one son and I almost didn’t get out. We got out just before everything collapsed. And that was that was a big deal. It taught us all the importance of of life. Sounds corny, but also the idea that stuff doesn’t matter. There was a moment in time where my wife and I didn’t realize that we were all out of the house. And so for a second we thought we lost somebody in the family. A few seconds later, the fire chief comes up and says, Mr. Rocket’s a total loss. And I was the happiest guy. It was a Christmas miracle. No, it wasn’t a total loss. Everybody was okay. So it taught us a lot of great lessons.

Herb Cohen [00:06:37] David And we were talking in the green room. You demonstrated to me that you have a lot of pride in building your team. Your team obviously is very loyal to you and stuck with you for a lot of years.

Ron Rock [00:06:46] Where do you think all that came from? When I was 12, 13, 14, everybody came to my house. I don’t know why I didn’t ask them to. Everybody was kind of we were the know. We were the central spot. As I’ve gone through my career, employees, team members have joined. Some of them been with me now since 1985. So it’s it’s the ability, again, to respect and love the people on your team. And you do that and they’re going to bring it back to you.

Ron Rock [00:07:16] Didn’t you mention that your father was fatherless? Your mom was the youngest of eight? I’m wondering what effect that had on their building, their family and on everybody hanging out at your house.

Ron Rock [00:07:28] You know, it’s interesting. My dad will say he had 30 brothers because he was in the same class with these kids. And you live, Dick Sherrod, for fatherless boys. And so it was an institution. He didn’t have it. Memories of how his father did things. So he started with a clean slate. On the flip side, you have my mother, the youngest of eight, six sisters, two brothers. And so everything was she had she had lots of perspective. And so the two of those combined, I think, created a very unique household. I’m the only kid I know growing up whose dad worked at home that was attached. So you put all those dynamics together and it was unlike anything else that I’ve ever seen.

Herb Cohen [00:08:11] And what was your dad doing it for a living?

Herb Cohen [00:08:14] My dad was a hairdresser until he was 50, and then he went to work for a fortune company called Roman Hearts, as it.

Herb Cohen [00:08:21] Was when Dad was a hairdresser. Did you ever go in there? And what was the effect of going in there and dad being a hairdresser at home?

Ron Rock [00:08:28] We were not supposed to go in, but we would you would kind of sneak in. All the women would make a fuss over you and you’d go in with a broken bike part and you’d go in with a tool, or you’d go in for a question and Dad would be there doing somebody’s hair. And finally he would have to acknowledge you. And everybody thought that was cute. And my one sister, who’s eight years younger, she was like the she was like one of the women. So it was it was, again, a very different environment.

Herb Cohen [00:08:55] So you’ve learned how would you describe yourself?

Ron Rock [00:09:02] Very, very practical, hands on. Nothing intimidates me as far as trying to figure something out. Very empathic, very caring, loving.

Herb Cohen [00:09:14] So in this, do you see yourself retiring at some point? It sounds like you really love your work. It feels like you really love art. No.

Ron Rock [00:09:21] I tried to retire when I was 50. It lasted two years. I’ll never retire again. I love what I do. I get to lecture at universities. I’m on boards, some public, some private, and I don’t ever want to stop doing what I’m doing. I’d like to slow down maybe and find better balance. But no, absolutely. Retirement’s not. Not in the.

Herb Cohen [00:09:41] And so you enjoy the process of creation, of coming up with an idea, employing a team around an idea, especially with these people who’ve been with you a long time and you really can trust them.

Ron Rock [00:09:51] I love the idea of innovation. I was first in the cloud. I was first with computers, I was first with Mobile.

Herb Cohen [00:10:03] We’ve been speaking with Ron Rock, CEO and co-founder of Microshare here on Executive Leaders Radio show. Forget to visit our Web site, Executive Leaders Radio.com, to learn more about our executive leaders, its executive leaders Radio.com, and more about our executive leader. Stick around. Be back in a moment right after this quick break. Don’t go away. This is Herb Cohen, your host and executive leaders, Radio.com.