The Untold Side of Hobby Lobby’s Success

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0:47This is The Ed Myron Show. Hi, everybody. Welcome back to the show. So today's one of those days where I sort of sit in awe of the two people I get a chance to share some time with because, you know, in all candor, there are two men that I'd like to be more like and that I aspire to be more like. And the topic of today's show is very sensitive, very important to me as well. So first, let me tell you what they're here to talk about, which is leaving a legacy for your family. And they've got a book they've written together called The Legacy Life, Leading Your Family to Make a Difference for Eternity.

1:20This is going to be a special show, everybody. And I have two very special men here with me. The first one, I will just tell you that the people that I admire the most, admire him the most. and I hear his name all the time from the men that I look up to as sort of their role model of how they hope to live their lives. He happens to have found a little company called Hobby Lobby. They've only got about 50 ,000 employees, about a thousand stores. They've generated billions in revenue and that's not really the most impressive thing about him. In my world, he is known as the person, you know, he wouldn't tell you this, but the person who's probably given the most money to Christian causes individually of anybody on planet Earth right now, and was instrumental in the founding of the Bible app with my friend Craig Groeschel and others, and that is David Green.

2:07So first, let me welcome David Green to the show. David, thank you for being here today. Thank you. It's an honor to be here with you. Well, it's my honor. And then sitting with him, as I get to read his background, I was even equally blown away, which is Bill High. Bill's the CEO of Legacy Stone, and it's an important company because they're dedicated to building family legacy, which is what we're going to talk about here today. But he's involved and he's been involved in about, they say, six billion plus dollars in charitable giving over his lifetime through various foundation work. These are just two men who have lived a life that more of us should aspire to live.

2:43And so we're going to have a conversation today about building a legacy for your family, building business life and approaching business from that perspective, which you don't hear very much on social media ever. And so you're going to hear a lot about it today from these two men. So Bill, hi, welcome to the show as well. Great to have you here, sir. Thank you, sir. All right, here we go, you guys. Let's start out, first of all, with this whole idea of legacy. I'm going to challenge you both up front. I think a lot of people that would be listening to this and go, that's great, I'll get around to it.

3:09But right now, I got to pay some bills and get my company off the ground. Yeah, I think you know that most people think that. I'm curious, David, we'll start with you. When you started Hobby Lobby, I think you took a$600 loan from a family member or something to start it. Were you even at that time thinking about legacy or was it just a day-to-day existence to try to survive? And what would you say to somebody who feels like they're in that mode? And you're talking about building a legacy. Yeah, I think you got it. When I borrowed$600, I was trying to figure out how to pay it back. And that took most of my time and attention.

3:41So I think God has given us, I think, I know God has given us that he has a plan for our lives. and our plan may not just unravel in one year or two years, but I think we need to be working towards it. And I think in working towards it, it just means to be the very best you can. Sometimes I talk about someone that's flipping hamburgers. If that's what you're doing, do the very, very best. And in that, I think you're going to find out where God wants you. You have to follow wherever you are and do the very best you can. And then also ask God to lead you in wherever and whatever he would have you to do.

4:13So when I was opening the first door, seriously, I think the only thing I was thinking about is just making it the next day. So when you have$600 and you have us, in fact, we were making frames in our garage for two years before we opened our first store. And our first store was only about 600 square feet, which is the size of a living room. And that was right here in Oklahoma in 1972. So our first store was very, very small. I think we did$36 ,000 from October through December. So that was our start. It was very, very slow. And to be honest, I wasn't, you got it. I was thinking about just trying to get to the next day.

4:52Were you always bold about your faith, even in the beginning, David? I'm just curious. No, in fact, I'm ashamed that I wasn't because I've heard people that were in school with me. It says, I didn't know you as a Christian. So unfortunately, I was not bold when I was in school about my faith. And so hopefully I've grown over the years, just like I've grown in terms of business, what we really want to do, what our purpose is. So it's really been over a period of time that hopefully we're closer to the Lord and we think more about him than we did. But I was undercover most of the time when I was in high school.

5:29And that's not good. But to be honest, that's who I was. I love that answer. Bill, I won't hold this against you, but he's a former attorney, you guys. We won't use that on him today. But Bill, I'm curious, this idea of legacy, I really prepped for this interview today thinking, just not talked about. If you go to social media right now, entrepreneurship or building a business is about getting your Lamborghini and having the boat and short term all the time. And I know for you, you can correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe you lost your dad pretty young. 12. I was 12 when he passed. I'm just curious, did that shape this idea for you of family being the primary focus and building a legacy?

6:15And just your overall thoughts on that. What would you say to somebody who, they're not used to this message, trust me. This is going to be on YouTube and on Apple and all these different platforms. This is not the message of entrepreneurship or business right now. I'm wondering if that losing your dad so young shaped that foundation for you and what you would say to somebody who's, they don't think about this as business at all. They're thinking about, you know, getting that material good is the first thing they're focused on. Yeah, no question. You're raising so many things in there, Ed. You know, the mindset of the Western business guy today is that we're building to sell so we can go sit on a beach somewhere in many cases.

6:50But the idea of build to sustain is totally different. And in my background, because my dad passed away early, the very first thing that hit my heart was really this idea of family because it goes in a minute. We were on a podcast yesterday with Jenny Yurvich, and she talks about the idea that 75 % of your time with your kids will be spent by the time they're 12. So for many of us, we're putting the toothpaste back in the tube because we're too late. You know, you don't head out on a road trip without a map. You know where your destination is. And so what we really, David and I, really desire is that more families, more of these business guys that you're often talking to, is they'll start out with a map.

7:32And that map is going to have this generational mindset that we're going to invest in our kids. In the Jewish world, by the way, they started zero to five, and they told stories, and they taught the Shema. Look upwards and then tell stories. And that was zero to five. There was an intentional education program. They started with a map. And that's what we really need to give our families. We need to give that to the business people we work with, is that what you're doing today, We tend to wait for the slower day, right? A slower day will come, and then eventually I'll work on these other things.

8:09Well, by the time you get there, man, you're too late in some cases. So we've got to start now. And that's some of the mindset shift that I'm really focused on because of what I went through, that loss of the father, the importance of the family hit me early on as a kid. This story thing you talk about in the book, I don't know that I understand it because you make it a big concept in the book of the fact of telling stories, right? Give us an application of that. What's that look like? Is there a particular story of a family in the Bible that you would tell or maybe tell us, or just overall that concept of storytelling in general being a fundamental part of leaving a legacy?

8:46Because I never even thought about it that way. Yeah, I'll have David talk about this too, about what they do on an annual basis. They have an annual family celebration. But if you take a look at even just the idea of Passover, Passover in the Bible starts with the youngest child turning to the eldest at the table and saying, tell us a story about how God delivered us. One of the chapters in the book, we tell stories of families that succeeded. The oldest story, oldest family in the Bible that we know of made it 2 ,400 years. That's still recorded. And the picture of them is sitting around a campfire telling the story of God's deliverance.

9:29There's research out there, by the way, on the, if you will, the non-faith side of families that succeed. So set apart the Bible for a moment. But if you're going to succeed as a family, you got to tell the stories, because stories grab the emotion, and that you can hold that emotion in your heart, your body for generations. And so we see that time and time again. I could just kind of tell you all kinds of stories, whether the Bible or historically of families that do that. One thing, if you did nothing else, sometimes we say, what are the 10 stories that your kids need to know in order for those set of values to continue on from one generation to the next?

10:12Wow. David, what were you going to say? You know, in Oklahoma City, by the way, we have 46 family members, my wife and I. You know, we have great grandchildren and we're counting almost by the day. So we've they just keep counting. OK, so we got a lot of great grandkids. And so we're all here in Oklahoma City. And I think it's so important. And why are they all here in Oklahoma City? I don't know. So don't ask. But we're all here. We're close by. But I think it's really important for us. And Bill got us started on coming together with what we call our mission, vision, and our values. And that's this document you see right here.

10:51So I think it's one of the things that's helped us hold ourselves together to tell stories. And this is who we are. And who are you? And so what we wanted to say, our vision and our mission and our values are in this document. And every single one of these have scriptures to back them up. Sometimes we get groups together. they come in here and we talk to them and they said, well, has it changed over the years? Well, not if the Bible hasn't changed, you know. So we have scriptures that says this is why our values are is in the value is knowing God. Our values is living for our family and our values is serving others.

11:27And our mission is to love God intimately, live extravagant generosity. Our vision is to go on the adventure of impacting our world for Christ. So I think having something like this for us to have something written that this is who and what we want to be, not that we're perfect at it, but this is who we want to be. And we come together once a year and we celebrate this and we talk about this particular document. So I think it goes back to what you're talking about in terms of our family and how that we bring it in as important in life. You know, we have a lot of co-managers that comes on that's going to be our future managers.

12:07We have been open about 40, 50 stores since COVID. It's been about 30 stores a year. So we bring all the co-managers in here. They've all been here and we talk to them about family. We're closed on Sunday because of the family. We're closed at 8 o 'clock because of this family. We're only open 66 hours a week because of the family. So we just let them know more important than the business. More important than the business is their family. We can do business pretty good. Most of us are pretty good at our jobs and we work really hard on it. But we try to let you need to be intentional about your family.

12:42You need to figure out how do you bring them together, how you do the best best you can to think about your family. You know, even as Christians, we're not too good at marriage. You know, if you if you look at the numbers. But why is that? And it's because we're not intentional about it. We're intentional about making money and to retire and to do this, this, this, this, this, which is not important at all compared to our life with the Lord and walking with him. And so this is what we encourage our people to do is, doesn't sound like the right thing to do to tell them that it's more important than their job, but let's face it, it is.

13:17And so we want them to know it's okay with us that you give more time to bring in a family together, a marriage together, children that serve the Lord. And this is what we feel like that they need and that we want to help them accomplish that goal.

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15:31It's so wonderful. I was thinking, first off, by the way, everybody, it's why I would like you to get the book, The Legacy Life. You know, usually when people come on, I don't push the book real hard. I'm pushing this book real hard for y 'all. One of the reasons is that, ask yourself a question if you're listening to these two men right now. What's the vision for your family? What's the dream? Where are you going? What are your core values? What's your code of conduct, which they also will talk about in a minute as well? Do you have one for your family? Because most of you have your core values or your mission statement for your business.

16:00But if I was to ask your son, what's the vision for your family? Do you know? I'm just thinking when you're talking, David, I bet if I grabbed one of your grandsons, they could give me some of this stuff. And you know what? I'm remiss. I didn't start doing this stuff until my kids were teenagers. I wish I would have raised them with it. I'm going to ask you guys a hard question, and it's not in the book. I like asking stuff that they're not going to just get in the book. There's a dad listening to this right now who goes, you know what? I've fallen down on the job a little bit. We don't have a vision in our family.

16:32Maybe I haven't led the way I want to. Maybe I've been too focused on business. Or maybe in my business, I've just been focused on business, and I don't create a family environment or a faith-based environment like I know I should. And so I'm disqualified from doing that going forward, meaning these past, it's too late. Yeah, I already blown it. My kids are 12, they're 14 or whatever it is. And I just share this with the two of you. My dad was an alcoholic and a drug addict when I was a little boy up until I was 15. And our family was very chaotic as a result of that. And when I was 15, my dad made one decision that changed our family forever.

17:08And that was that he was going to really try to go get sober. In one decision, he changed our family. When my dad made the decision, And I said, dad, what's the, what's going to be any different this time? You've tried to quit drinking so many times. And he gave me, he told me that the difference this time was that he was going to do it because he loved his family so much. And he said, the second thing is I found somebody I'm going to do it with. And I said, that's great, dad. Someone's helping you. Who is that? And he said, Jesus. And that was the first time my dad really ever talked about God.

17:37Yeah. You talk. And my dad stayed sober the rest of his life. And I believe one of the reasons I'm sitting here is my father made that one decision. It wasn't too late. He wasn't disqualified. And as he got older, he had such rich relationships with his granddaughters and his grandsons and his children. And that one decision changed it. I just wonder if either one of you would speak to that, to somebody who's listening to this going, I've already blown it. Or you don't know about this sin I have or this mistake I've made. I can't build a legacy in my family. I've probably already screwed it up.

18:07Or I come from a long line of screw-ups in my family. or maybe they're not even a person of faith, David, listening to this. What would you say to that person listening to that or thinking those thoughts right now? Yeah, I'm going to hand that off to Bill, but I really think that it's, you know, like your dad, it wasn't too late. And we need to know it's not too late. God loves us where we are. He's going to take us where we are. Think about the thief on the cross. He says, you're going to be with me in heaven. It wasn't even too late for him. So it's not too late. And I think I want to hand this to Bill because he can do a better job than I can on this one.

18:38Well, I would say David's the testimony of this very idea because if you look at his own family, his mom and dad were pastors of small churches, and they might have been able to say, gosh, what have we done here? We never built anything. And I think that's where you're going, Ed, is this idea is that all you need to do is show up today and be faithful to what God's called you to do. Love him and love people. If you'll do that today and then make the decision tomorrow and the next day and the next day, that little one-degree change will make a difference for generations to come that you can't even imagine or envision.

19:25And it may not even fully show up in your own lifetime, but it will. Faithful today makes a difference for generations to come. There is no question about it. I think about in the scriptures, by the way, that story, the famous story of Joseph, you know, and we read that story and we think Joseph's such a great hero. He gets, you know, betrayed by his brothers. He's thrown into prison and a couple of times, and he must've been a really low, but it's not just about how Joseph's a hero. It's actually this idea about how God brings together a family after 20 years, after 20 years, and says, you know what, it's all okay.

20:05And I'm going to bring it back together. And that's God's story. He redeems and he restores, but we have to be faithful today. I like asking hard stuff. So you're just making me think as you're talking. David, both of you, Bill as well, you both become tremendously financially successful. I think that's an understatement. It's a hard question. Is that part of the responsibility of a leader of a family to make sure their family's financially safe and secure? How much of the role of a provider do you think in a family? You know, we're talking about legacy and eternity here. There's also the day-to-day existence of a family and making sure they live in a safe place.

20:46And they've got a... I just wonder in your own life where that ranks. You know, is it a zero or is it important? I think it's important to the Lord that he supplies. You need to have something to eat. There is something you need. But when I think about finance, I think about my mother and father. My father never pastored a church over 100, and there were six children. Now, you do the math on that, okay? But I think about when my mother passed away. My mother passed away, and I tell people she was the most wealthy person I ever knew because she died with a tremendous relationship with the Lord, a tremendous prayer life, six children that served the Lord, a marriage that lasted for life.

21:29how in the world and by the way she wanted nothing this world had absolutely nothing i never heard her say well i wished i had something so my mother was rich so how can we be rich sometimes it's just not by wanting more stuff because we think that's what's going to make us happy sometimes this is what we're thinking so i think the fact that god has blessed us financially just has to do with what he wants us to do in our purpose some other people's purpose like my mother and father that That wasn't their purpose. Their purpose wasn't necessarily to finance the museum, the Bible museum as an example or whatever.

22:08So God has a purpose in our life and finance is part of that purpose. But in a lot of our lives, it's not. But I think we can really get messed up with wanting more and more and more. But God wants us to eat. There's a certain amount that he wants us to have. But sometimes we want more than what he wants us to have. And so that's what's important for us in our business is to first know that everything belongs to him. Hobby Lobby belongs to God, not because I say so, because God's word says so. Our talent, everything we have belongs to God. So no one in our family has ever gotten a dollar from Hobby Lobby that they didn't earn.

22:47So really important to us is a word called earn. So every one of us, we sit together and we say, you have this position, so you should earn X. And that's where the money that comes from for our family is money that's earned. So that's really important for us is to get what you earn and not what you didn't earn. Now, we started giving money to family members, the 46 of us, because of whatever we decide. There's enough money to go around. We would actually ruin lives instead of help lives. I think finance can really be a huge negative in anybody's life. But when it's given to God and we know that we're stewards and not owners, and we know that we're only stewards of what God has blessed us with.

23:30So I don't think it's real important for us to have a lot. My mother and dad didn't. And they lived a good life and they loved the Lord and God took care of them. I love this.

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