No one would have been surprised if any of them had joined the family business. After all, the three businesses were successful, and as youths, the three men spent summers working for their respective fathers. So why not secure the future with guaranteed jobs?
Because sometimes, the easy path isn’t the one worth traveling. For some people, it’s more important to create their own legacy. Each of these men was imbued with the desire to distinguish himself, just as his father before him had done.
Ron Watt Jr. is the son of the founder of Watt, Roop & Co., which was later acquired by St. Louis-based Fleishman-Hillard.
Cullen Roth is the son of Edwin Roth, who bought Airport Parking Company Of America (APCOA) and grew it to a $250 million corporation with facilities in 45 states and across Europe.
Daniel Ramella is the son of Julius Ramella, who bought Cleveland Menu Printing Inc. and built it into a successful company.
The sons are in different phases of their careers. Watt, at 27, recently founded his own public relations and marketing communications firm.
Roth turned around a struggling manufacturer, then bought it from the owners. Today, his company stands on the verge of major growth.
The most seasoned of the trio, Ramella, joined Penton Media Inc. as a sales trainee and worked his way up through the ranks to president. Retirement may not be far down the road for him.
Their reasons for not joining or staying in the family business vary, but all are satisfied with their decisions, and each attributes his success to lessons learned from his father while growing up in the business.
“Being a family member in a family business is an absolutely terrific opportunity to learn about the ins and out of the business world on a first-hand basis,” says Ramella, whose brothers still run Cleveland Menu Printing Inc. “Any child that’s fortunate enough to have a family business as part of their growth experience has a significant advantage, because it’s almost like living an MBA.”
The Salesman
Ron Watt Jr. extends his arm and points down West 6th Street toward the heart of downtown Cleveland.
“You can see it from here,” he says, his broad brown eyebrows furrowed, head turned to the right. “That’s where we started less than a year ago.”
At the other end of Watt’s outstretched finger is his Warehouse District apartment, which was the second headquarters for Hybrid Marketing, the marketing communications firm he runs with President Michael Zimmerman.
These days, Watt is perched high above the street on the third floor of the Bradley Building. The offices of Hybrid Marketing, with its refinished hardwood floors and high exposed ceilings, are much more suited for a company office than a 27-year-old bachelor’s apartment. But they remain a far cry from the 52nd floor of Key Tower, the former headquarters of his father’s company, Watt, Roop & Co., and later Watt/Fleishman-Hillard.
Watt, who started there in 1997 as an account executive, could easily still be at the company founded by his father and James Roop more than 20 years ago. He had the right name and the right experience. He grew up in the public relations firm and picked up a marketing degree at Fordham University in the Bronx, and held internships in Germany and at Picker International.
But only a year after he started working there, the family business had new parents — corporate parents — which left the entrepreneurial Watt often frustrated with the layers of bureaucracy and staff.
“In a larger agency situation, you can’t turn on a dime,” he says. “Everything takes longer. It’s as simple as that. If people don’t want to believe that, they’re lying to themselves.”
Watt still wanted to pursue a career in marketing and public relations, even if the company wasn’t his namesake.
“Frankly, I don’t know what else to do,” shrugs Watt. “I started as an office boy in about the seventh grade. They were summer jobs, but I thought it was cool. I thought it was a really cool business because there’s a lot of creativity running around.”
Hybrid isn’t Watt’s first stab at business. Fresh out of Fordham in 1997, he and a classmate founded a record label called G21 Records, a subsidiary of WRC Entertainment Management of New York City, which was owned by his father. The label signed five rock and pop bands but folded months later, and the music publishing rights were sold back to the artists.
“I wanted to get out of it,” Watt admits with a good-natured chuckle. “It was pretty nerve-wracking dealing with prima donnas all the time.”
So Watt moved home to Cleveland and joined his father at Watt, Roop & Co. When St. Louis-based Fleishman-Hillard, at the time the largest PR firm in the world, bought the company, the cultural shift was dramatic.
“It’s a wonderful company, but it was a big multi-national company and we lost the entrepreneurialism that was the old Watt, Roop & Co.,” says Zimmerman, who had been president and chief operating officer of Watt. “I missed that. (Hybrid) was a need in the market and there was an opportunity to recreate the entrepreneurialism.”
Zimmerman left Fleishman-Hillard shortly after the takeover and founded Hybrid, and Watt followed soon after. Zimmerman has known Watt Sr. almost as long as his son has known him. He joined Watt, Roop & Co. in 1983 and bought out a portion of Roop’s share when the partnership ended in 1996.
Like any good salesman, Watt and Zimmerman continually steer the conversation toward their product, Hybrid Marketing. Even when they talk about their mentor, Watt Sr., the topic somehow swings around to their company. It’s clear he taught them well.
“I learned we’re businessmen first,” Watt says. “Our job is to increase sales. Our job is to make magic happen for the client, and usually when you take a business approach and involve creativity and strategic thinking, those are the ingredients for that magic.”
When Watt told his father of his plans to join Hybrid, there were no pearls of wisdom offered to his son. He simply said, “Good luck.”
“When he was two years older than I am, he ended up going out on his own anyway,” Watt says. “So it’s about an entrepreneurial spirit, and I think he realizes that I’ve always had that ever since I started lemonade stands when I was 3, or shining shoes or shining desks. You can’t hold back that entrepreneurial spirit.
“I’ve never been happier in my entire life, and I’m still only 27. It’s a roller coaster, but it’s fun. You have to keep remembering why you’re in this situation. It’s because you have a dream, you’re following your dream. A lot of times that’s more important than anything.”
So far, Watt is off to an impressive start. In less than a year, Hybrid has landed 17 clients, including Myers University, investment banker Amerge, SS&G Technology Consulting, Restaurant Developers Corp., which owns Mr. Hero and Arabica, N2Net and network integrator Verity Solutions.
The Craftsman
Cullen Roth says he was destined to be the “Prince of Parking.” Those regal inclinations changed in 1982, the year his father’s business, Airport Parking Company Of America, better known as APCOA, was acquired by Buffalo-based conglomerate Delaware North Cos.
Roth’s father, Edwin, was not one to rest on his laurels, though. After he sold APCOA, Edwin bought the franchise rights for Chuck E. Cheese pizza restaurants for the state of Ohio, as well as in Atlanta and Houston. At its peak, he managed 17 restaurants.
Cullen Roth fully expected to join his father and his brother, Corey, in the family business. He spent winter vacation his senior year at Cornell with a construction manager learning how to build a Chuck E. Cheese. He spent the previous summer in management training and bouncing between Atlanta and Texas, building more restaurants.
In his final semester of college, Roth was preparing to interview for a commercial lending position at a major bank. The night before his interview, he noticed a management consulting firm called Bain & Co. was scheduled to give a presentation about itself to graduating seniors.
“What the heck does a management consulting firm do?” Roth thought.
The presentation was apparently quite effective.
“I was really fired up,” Roth says. “It sounded exciting and interesting, and at the same time they made it sound like it was a lot of fun, which I should say it was.”
Roth’s enthusiasm paid off during his interview with Bain. He and about 100 other recent graduates from around the country were hired by the Boston consulting firm. Despite his years of experience working for the family business, Roth remained intimidated by his peers.
“I am sure out of all the people I worked for, I was by far the dumbest,” he says. “I was surrounded by these brilliant people. It was amazing. I felt like an idiot, but that’s another story. I learned more from watching them work, and seeing what they did. It was a great education.”
The long hours at Bain began to wear on Roth, though. After three years, he was looking for a way out, but he was no longer interested in joining the family business. His experience as a management consultant, combined with the influence of his father, inspired Roth to try his hand as an entrepreneur.
“My plan was to find a small business that was in trouble,” he says, a smile emerging on his bearded face. “I was going to take everything I learned from my consulting days, I was going to find this small business that was in trouble, I was going to turn it around, and three years later I was going to sell it for a huge profit. I was going to do the same thing over and over. That was my plan back then.”
To date, Roth has yet to sell that first business.
Through his father’s accountant, he learned of a company called Working Walls that manufactured and installed custom fabric-covered bulletin boards and acoustical wall panels. The company was founded by a former graphics painter who overheard a conversation between two Sherwin-Williams executives while painting a conference room in their offices.
“They were complaining that they needed this Velcro-compatible wall board, and how much it was going to cost,” Roth says. “My partner interrupted these guys and said, ‘Give me 24 hours, I’ll see if I can find you a deal.'”
The next day, Roth’s business partner, John Mates, returned with the first Working Walls panel.
Eventually, Mates phased out the graphics painting to making more Velcro-compatible boards. He started selling to office furniture dealers, and over the years added different types of fabric to the wall panels. Sales were strong, but Roth says his partner wasn’t controlling costs.
“He was effectively losing money on every panel, and trying to make it up in volume,” Roth says.
That was a surefire method to failure.
So in September 1987, Roth bought half the business. Within a year, he turned the company around. Three years later, instead fulfilling his predictions and selling the business for a large profit, Roth pulled an about face and bought out his partner.
“It was time to invest more money in the business, and it was time to start signing your name on the dotted line with personal guarantees and things like that,” Roth says. “(Mates) was married with a couple kids; I was still single. For me to personally guarantee something wasn’t as big a risk as it was for him. He and his wife had a discussion and he decided that he’d rather not do that.”
At the same time, Roth’s father and brother sold the Chuck E. Cheese franchise rights and purchased and managed other businesses including Aerosol Systems Inc. in Macedonia. Edwin has since retired and moved to Aspen.
“The most important lesson I learned from him (Edwin) is that you can’t just walk in the door and make a zillion dollars,” Roth says. “I know it’s a clich, but you really have to bust your butt. You have to work hard. It’s not a 9 to 5 job. It doesn’t work that way. The hours are much longer, and even when you’re on vacation, you’re still working.”
Roth remembers childhood ski trips with his family in Aspen. During breakfast and lunch, his father would be on the phone to the office.
“He’d get all his phone calls out of the way in the morning, then he’d make a few in the middle of the day, and in the afternoon there would be a few final calls,” Roth says. “When I go on vacation, I do close to the same thing. We’ll have fun with the wife and the kids, and at some point I’d say, ‘Excuse me, I have to make a few phone calls.'”
Although Roth is making his own name as a Cleveland entrepreneur, he still turns to his father for occasional advice.
“He and my brother, the three of us, will get together and talk about business,” Roth says. “It used to be quarterly, but now it’s probably twice a year. We don’t have as many official meetings. We have a lot more unofficial meetings. I know that I’m not as good at this as I could be, and I need to rely on as many helpful advisers as I possibly can.”
Roth should be calling his family more often in the coming months. He is acquisition negotiations with wall panel companies in Michigan, Florida and New England, and plans to release several new products within the next six to eight months.
“A lot of these other panel manufacturers are much more regional than us,” Roth says. “There were a couple deals that have come close to happening. Either they change their mind or I would change my mind at the last minute because there would be a new piece of information that would change the structure of the deal. We’re still looking at that.”
Roth has two daughters, ages 5 and 7, who one day might confront the decision he faced while a senior in college: to join or not to join the family business. But it’s a little too early to tell.
“If they want to join, sure,” Roth says. “Right now they’re interested in Barbie and swimming. When we start making Barbie covered wall panels, I’m sure they’ll be all over it. If I’m still doing this and they want to be involved, I’d be thrilled. But we’ll have to see.”
The Executive
Julius Ramella grew up in an orphanage in the early 1900s, and when he was 18, he went to work for a small menu company as a printer. He ultimately bought the printing division of that company, and in 1930 formed Cleveland Menu Printing Inc., which today prints menus for restaurants, hotels and country clubs worldwide.
As a teen-ager, Daniel Ramella worked for his father’s business in the summer. He printed, proofread and delivered menus to restaurants around Cleveland. Ramella enjoyed the work, but even as a young man, he knew it wasn’t going to be his future.
“I had the urge to try something different,” says Ramella, who today is the president and chief operating officer at Penton Media Inc., a $370 million publicly traded company. “I had a real interest and desire to try new things and apply my degree. It had nothing to do with not wanting to work there as much as it was to try something different and see the world outside of my family’s business.”
After graduating from Boston College in 1974, Ramella joined Arthur Andersen as an accountant.
“I was going to become a lawyer,” Ramella says. “But by the time I got out of school, I didn’t get into any of the law schools I selected so I needed to get a job. I was an accountant by training and figured I might as well use the degree I earned in college.”
After three years of crunching numbers, Ramella was eager to pursue a career where he could interact with people more often and signed on as a sales trainee at Penton Media. Like his father before him, he rose to the top.
“There is some ink in our blood on both sides,” Ramella says. “But (Penton) is essentially a publishing company: We create content, operate trade shows, produce magazines and use the Internet as a communications medium. While there is a little bit of common thread from the printing standpoint, my experience was mostly with the day-to-day publishing business of Penton.”
Restaurants, however, have been part of Ramella’s life in more ways than his father’s business. During his tenure at Penton, one of the magazines where Ramella served as sales manager and then publisher was Restaurant Hospitality. On top of that, his wife’s family owned the Pat Joy’s Tavern restaurant group, which had two locations downtown and two on the west side of Cleveland.
“I had a lot of entrepreneurial spirit that surrounded me on both sides of the family,” Ramella says. “In many ways working at Penton was very entrepreneurial in its own right because the way we’re set up as a company. When you’re the publisher of a magazine, you act in many ways as if you’re a president of your own small business.”
That kind of corporate culture is the main reason Ramella says he has stayed at Penton since 1977.
“There were a number of times in my Penton career when I was going to leave and try something on my own,” he says. “Some of it was tempting to maybe join the family business, other parts of it were maybe to launch my own magazines and start my own company, but every time I got kind of close to that decision, I got another promotion or opportunity presented to me here at Penton.”
Ramella’s experiences mirror those of Watt and Roth. Each has blazed his own trail, choosing to stay out of the family business. But none have forsaken the lessons learned from their fathers. In fact, Watt and Roth continue to learn new lessons every day.
For Ramella, the example set by his father serves as a valuable model for him as he runs Penton’s daily operations.
“His work ethic was that you put your nose to the grindstone,” he says. “You’re going to run through some cycles, but you’ll ultimately succeed if you work your business ethically — take care of your people and your customers.” How to reach: Hybrid Marketing, (216) 774-9272 or www.hybridmar.com; Working Walls Inc., (216) 749-7850; Penton Media Inc., (216) 696-7000 or www.penton.com
