Sometime around Thanksgiving 2014, the owners and management of Interline Brands Inc. noticed it was difficult to find acquisition targets at reasonable prices.
So, Chief Executive Officer Michael Grebe reasoned, maybe the private equity firms that owned Interline should instead consider selling the company while the market was strong.
Interline eventually agreed to a $1.625 billion buyout last summer by The Home Depot Inc.
The lesson from that, Grebe said Tuesday at a luncheon meeting of the North Florida chapter of the Association for Corporate Growth, is you always have to be prepared to take advantage of opportunities.
“When a window opens up, jump through it,” he said.
“You never get an 18-month notice of a window opening up.”
Grebe, who retired from Interline a month ago, was giving lessons he learned as a CEO at the meeting Downtown at The River Club. He said you shouldn’t necessarily wait for the perfect opportunity, just a good one.
“Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good,” he said.
Other lessons included treating “teammates” well and “the only way to be successful in business — and life — is to surround yourself with great people.”
Grebe said a strong board of directors can help a CEO manage the business by bringing in different perspectives.
“You’re too close to it sometimes,” he said. “It’s really important to have those alternative voices.”
Grebe said three traits he looks for in recruiting are intelligence, grit and being a team player.
He said you might find people with those traits anywhere, such as in your server at a restaurant.
“Always be recruiting. You just never know when those people turn up,” he said.
The CEO should never seem above the rest of the staff, he said. “Be humble, accountable and, above all, approachable,” he said.
“Talk to people, communicate to people, relate to people at multiple different levels,” he said.
Grebe’s humility may have made Interline less visible in the Jacksonville community than some other big companies, because he wasn’t overly promoting the company.
“I tend to be more private than most,” he said.
Interline markets and distributes maintenance, repair and operations products throughout North America to professional contractors and maintenance workers.
It has about $1.6 billion to $1.7 billion in annual sales and employs about 4,300 people across the country, including 700 in Jacksonville.
“It’s been consistently growing and a great asset to the community,” Grebe said.
The company remains headquartered in Jacksonville under Home Depot’s ownership, but Grebe decided to leave the company last month.
His retirement brought another lesson about the importance of “chosen words” in communicating with associates and outsiders. Grebe said he thought carefully about how to explain his decision in a company-wide email.
“I chose the words ‘retire from Interline,’“ he said, so people understood he was not planning to kick back and relax in retirement.
However, Grebe said after the meeting he hasn’t decided what he is going to do next.
“I’m sorting that all out,” he said. “I’m taking some time to network with people I trust and know and figuring out what that next step will be.”
He expects to remain active with Jacksonville organizations, including his position on the board of directors of the Jacksonville Branch of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta.
“I’m not leaving town,” he said.