“I think I flunked retirement,” says the 70-year-old Passante, who in addition to his work at Brenton maintains a calendar of motivational speaking and holds the presidency of his own executive recruiting and coaching company. (Hardly any wonder that the UT College of Business Administration honored him with its Pacemaker Award in 1980.) “I’m definitely a Type-A personality, but I’m also having a lot of fun at this.”
Brenton is a marketing and communication media company that creates, develops and produces TV shows. Their specialty is the automotive aftermarket, Passante explains: “We feature different automobiles, then show how to enhance them, how to make a particular model last longer or be safer.” Their well-over-a-million core demographic is (of course) male, 18 to 49 years old, with a mean income just south of $70,000 a year.
“They’re enthusiasts or professionals in the industry,” says Passante, who falls into that category himself: “I’ve always loved cars. I think it’s in my blood.
“Remember when new car models would come out and the dealers would cover up their showroom windows so you couldn’t see inside? At that time of year, my father would say, ‘OK, John we’re going to go look at cars.’ We’d drive around to the Toledo dealerships and I’d think, ‘This is cool. Every car is different.’ That was probably what got me.”
(Passante's love of cars is visible above, as he's pictured with two of his babies: a Triumph TR6 and his grandson Johnnie - "named after me," says proud Grandpa.)
To put himself through UT in the 1960s, he worked at Toledo’s Chevrolet plant on Alexis Road, attending classes during the day and making transmissions on the second shift. It was tough, he recalls. “But from my father, who came to America from Sicily and didn’t have a chance to get much education, I learned that you have to work for a living.”
His subsequent career steered him further into automotives, including a stint with Monroe Auto Equipment in Michigan. Something else was driving, him, though: “I always admired teachers. I owe a lot of where I am today to people who taught — and of course to Peggy, my bride of 46 years!
“But I’ve always believed in the importance of teaching in helping people be their very best. So in the 1970s I was teaching evening graduate-level courses at UT in the College of Business, working with Jack Simonetti, Ed Barney, Dale Sullivan, Dean Snow — great teachers themselves.”
His students, who worked during the day at companies that included Owens-Corning, Champion Spark Plug and Dana, began asking him to attend their management meetings to talk about leadership, employee communication and motivation.
“That was how it came about, becoming a public speaker. As word got around, I picked up more engagements.”
Busy, fulfilling years included the two daughters (Julie and Amy) he and Peggy raised. When John retired some seven years ago he was global executive director of human resources for Delphi Products in Troy, Michigan. “I continued to do a lot of recruiting for free as favors to people,” he says. Those freebies morphed into his own company, The Organizational Development Group Inc., for executive coaching and recruiting, and training and development seminars.
Then less than a year ago, he took a call from Frank McGonagle, Brenton Productions’ founder. Though aware of each other’s work in the automotive aftermarket, the two had never met. Over lunch, McGonagle asked John to find someone capable of taking over the business so he could retire.
“I conducted the search, and Frank and I together interviewed three candidates. He called me again, said, ‘I want to have lunch so I can tell you who I want to hire.’“
Turned out he wanted to hire Passante.
Passante is lavish in his praise for his CEO: “As well as founder, Frank’s a skilled journalist and marketer who did amazing work for [auto filter giant] FRAM.
“He’s also a burn survivor who raised four children under five years old when his wife died in a car crash.” That history continues to reverberate. Later this year,
TruckU (running on Fox’s SPEED Channel) will air a special episode on Operation Comfort Flyer, a nonprofit organization that offers recreational support programs for military burn trauma survivors — one of whom told McGonagle about an ambitious project meshing a Ford Bronco with an aging U.S. Army weapons carrier. View an advance clip
here.
It’s the kind of personal-best motivational project Passante loves as well. Meaningful work can heal, he says; certainly it can make the difference between drudgery and dynamism. “Companies wonder how to give people a sense of significance,” he notes. “The answer is leadership that grants people the chance to use their God-given talents. Among other things, that means face-to-face interactions between management and employees. Even in these high-content days, you still need the human contact and sense of belonging that a computer can’t provide.”
His voice gathering energy, he continues, “The economy is still struggling. If there’s ever a time for companies to pay attention to employee motivation, it’s now, to keep the people who can take you where you want to company to go, to compete globally. Technology and innovation will take you so far, but you’ve got to have a work force that’s motivated, excited by what they’re doing.”
It’s impossible to miss: a lifetime after buzzing on Bel-Airs and Studebakers, John Passante is still in thrall to that excitement.