YouSaid · the spoken record

Arthur Blank

lines on the record: 37
first: 2017-12-28
most recent: 2017-12-28
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“I used to tease Bernie. We ought to send it a thank you note every anniversary date when we were fired and he didn't want to do that. Anyway, he did us a favor.”
2017-12-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Live Episode! The Home Depot: Arthur Blank · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think that luck in timing is a big deal. I mean, I really do. A lot of it is success, is based on timing and luck, and being the right place, but then seizing opportunities. I think being willing to go out of your comfort zone. And I'm a big proponent of outward bound. I've done, I don't know how many outward bound courses myself, but we did a lot of that in terms of the training at HD, but a lot of it is based on their philosophies to serve, to strive, and not to yield. So I think that having that entrepreneurial drive and spirit to get up every day, to have purpose in your life every day, to become better every day, I'm doing this because I have a passion for doing it and I love being of service to other people in whatever form that I can be.”
2017-12-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Live Episode! The Home Depot: Arthur Blank · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I think it's less acceptable to deny people at First Amendment rights. So I think that's less acceptable. Having said that, I mean, I think that players should stand and should stand respectfully for the national anthem. And I will tell you, there are seven. These players have great respect for the military. And so it's not about the military to them. It's just that becomes an opportunity, a platform for them to speak about their concerns about social injustice, police accountability, their focus is on turning that platform now into progress on these issues and making sure that owners and organizations in America are listening to voices that cannot be heard. And I think I'm all for that.”
2017-12-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Live Episode! The Home Depot: Arthur Blank · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I felt buying a team efficiently, it seemed like more fun. Than sitting there and just watching them play and lose games and what have you. So that was in 2001. And I'm just finishing up our 17th year as owners. We've had multiple back-to-back winning seasons, multiple championships played well last year in the Super Bowl. We just forgot there was a fourth quarter in the game, but played really well for three quarters, and somehow, you know.”
2017-12-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Live Episode! The Home Depot: Arthur Blank · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I was a season ticket holder since I had moved to Atlanta, and I didn't realize this, but the commissioner before Commissioner Goodell, Commissioner Tagnebo at the closing when I bought the team, he said, you realize the team you just bought has never had back-to-back winning seasons. And I said, Paul, Paul's the smartest guy in the room, not because he told you, it's because he really was the smartest guy in the room. I said, that can't be correct. So I went back and I checked and it turned out that was correct. So I realized all those years that I was a seasoned ticket holder and I would have such angst over the Falcons I understood why because it was constantly like this. So I said to myself I can either sit and complain about it for the next 40 years of my life or just try to buy the thing and fix it.”
2017-12-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Live Episode! The Home Depot: Arthur Blank · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Back to them, right? Well, I talk to them as often as I can. We probably had two dinners and a lunch in the last 60 days together. So I see him a lot and it's always great to do that. So I felt the time was right. We began to do a search. The board found a candidate that was, his name was Bob Nardelli. I'm going to get some hisses from my HD folks in the audience now. But they brought in Bob Nardelli as the CEO. The board made that decision. And I was sure happy I wasn't there during the six years that he was there. That would have been the worst time in my life.”
2017-12-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Live Episode! The Home Depot: Arthur Blank · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I told the board at that time, I'd mean the earlier days in the company, the first, I don't know how many years, but that was a 23-year period of time. It was great fun. It was always adventures, starting a new business, going half broke, figuring out how to work through that, responding to customers. And as time went on, I found myself spending more time in meetings, more time doing things that I had to do that were part of the job and didn't dislike doing them, but they weren't as much fun for me anymore. So, and I really felt that 23 years was a long time for somebody in my position, first as president, later as CEO and chairman and what have you. And Bernie and I had always operated as a very close partnership. I mean, it was really more like two brothers working together, two partners working together than anything else.”
2017-12-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Live Episode! The Home Depot: Arthur Blank · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And because too many young executives, men or women, their attitude is that we got to work now, work hard, and put my career on fifth gear and go, go, go. And so when you return home in 10 years, you're not going to recognize your kids and your spouse is going to look at you and say, who are you again? So I think it's important to find balance in your life.”
2017-12-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Live Episode! The Home Depot: Arthur Blank · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“For young women in San Francisco, and when they did a retirement dinner for me in 2001, she couldn't be there, she couldn't get away, and she did a video piece and she sent it. And I still remember what she said there and she says, Dad, you know, I never realized when I was growing up, you know, the size of the Home Depot and the success of it because you were always there for me. You're always at events that were important to me. You're always there when I was doing dance recitals. You're always there in important school programs, whatever it may be. And I worked around the kids' schedule and I would work early in the morning. I'd work late at night. I'd put them to bed and work after that. And so I always made sure there was balance in my life. And I think I often ask by young folks, most people are younger than me, so it's easy for me to find people that want that advice today. But I always tell them, you know, make sure you have balance in your life.”
2017-12-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Live Episode! The Home Depot: Arthur Blank · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Thought you weren't going to ask me about my personal life. Don't worry, no, you can ask me whatever you want. I told guys, anything you want to talk about is fine. I think it's one of the things I'm most proud of. My oldest daughter, she was running a nonprofit for”
2017-12-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Live Episode! The Home Depot: Arthur Blank · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Do I make this store better? How do I own it? How do I feel accountable for it? How do I inject my ideas into it? And how do I make it better? So every store got better.”
2017-12-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Live Episode! The Home Depot: Arthur Blank · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Tell you a story that Sam Walton was the founder of Walmart. Sam was speaking at a retail conference I went to and somebody asked them and the company had gone on a $10 billion to $20 billion or something today. I don't know what they own half the world. But whatever between them and Amazon, but we said, well, how did you get from $10 to $20 billion? And said we opened up one store at a time. And that's all we did. And so really at HD we had a five-year plan, we had a one-year budget. We had all of that, but we focused on every single store and our plan was that each store had to be better than the last store we opened up. So we didn't have any planograms. We didn't have any, you have to do it this way. We didn't let the model get frozen. We didn't let it, we made the folks running the store think about this is the last store.”
2017-12-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Live Episode! The Home Depot: Arthur Blank · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I'm going to give you some shocking news today that I've kind of figured out and know to be true, and that is that you and I are going to approve a lot of stores in the future that we will actually never see. We'll never be in them. We'll never get a chance to go visit them. I remember stopped eating lunch, put down fork. Let me see, you're nuts. He said, that's crazy. How can we approve stores and never go visit him? I said, Bernie, because we spent about half our time in our stores. And I said, if you do the math of it, if we visit certain numbers of our existing stores every year, and we just realized that there were too many new stores. So I said, we need to document lead to write down. And I think the beauty of our core values, which are really focused on our associates and people and relationships and community and giving back, and the people who were serving drive everything that we're doing. Those are the ones that we listen to. Those are the ones we respond to.”
2017-12-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Live Episode! The Home Depot: Arthur Blank · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I think that we never really wrote them down. I remember I went to lunch at Bernie and I said, we're living these values, which by far, in a way, is the most important thing that we can do, but they're not written down.”
2017-12-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Live Episode! The Home Depot: Arthur Blank · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Wasn't working as great. We fine tuned it, got it where it needed to be, exploded in 80 and 81, and the numbers were incredible. And we went public in 81. Obviously, we got a great reception from the stock market. And then there's a long story after that. But that point forward, we knew we were going to be very successful.”
2017-12-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Live Episode! The Home Depot: Arthur Blank · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We spent really the next year in one of our core values is to listen and respond. In listening, I probably spent 75% of my time as did Bernie, as did really most of our associates on the floor of the store, finding out from customers what is it they like, what it didn't like, and we kept changing the mix, adding things, taking things off, changing prices, changing assortments, changing vendors, making sure we had service levels in areas they wanted them. So we kept refining the model. Every competitor came into our stores and visited us and said, I mean, these, I can't use bad words here because this is like kind of a live radio thing, but these whatever you want to call us, they're crazy. The stores are much too big, prices are much too low, they have way too much product and stock, they have too many services. I mean, the math isn't going to work. And of course, the math during 79.”
2017-12-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Live Episode! The Home Depot: Arthur Blank · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Not as expected. That'd be a mild statement. So we agreed, Bernie and I went to one store and our partner Pat and other associates obviously went to the other store and we agreed. We weren't going to talk to each other in the morning. And my three older children were each given $500 in $1 bills. And I told them, I said, look, I told the mother, I told them, I said, they'll be back in school by 11, 12 at the very latest. So at six o'clock at night, they were standing in front of the store still handing out $1 bills. So we had this grand opening and nobody came.”
2017-12-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Live Episode! The Home Depot: Arthur Blank · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“All you could see was trees. And so every once in a while, every 10 minutes say there's nobody living here, Arthur. So you can't open up a business. There's nobody living here. There's nothing but trees here. I'd have to get off the highway, drive them around for a little bit, show some divisions, subdivisions, get back on the highway, drive some lore. He said, still not enough people. There's nobody here. There's all these trees. So we did that Two hours we drove around 285 and got off and looked at subdivisions. So finally he became convinced that Atlanta would be an important growth market and it was even growing then. It was less than a million people when we opened up here in 1979 and today it's something altogether 7 million people.”
2017-12-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Live Episode! The Home Depot: Arthur Blank · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I had lived in Atlanta. The chain of drugstores was based in Griffin, Georgia. Griffin is the first city south of Atlanta. I always remembered Atlanta was a growth city, growth market. I love the city. So I asked Bernie, let's go to Atlanta. And at that time, this is hard to imagine because Atlanta even today qualifies as the national park based on number of trees that are still up in Atlanta despite all the development here, but there was less than a million people living in Atlanta at that time. So when I drove Bernie around Atlanta look at the sites, 285, which is everybody here is familiar with it.”
2017-12-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Live Episode! The Home Depot: Arthur Blank · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We had the experience and they look back at handy dan home improvement centers and they said we're betting on people here. We're not going to bet on that experience, on that smaller store.”
2017-12-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Live Episode! The Home Depot: Arthur Blank · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I still remember what Bernie said on the other end of the phone. He just said change the numbers. Change the numbers, like change the numbers. So, I mean, his argument, which really was valid, was that, look, this is a model. We don't have any of these stores. We're just projecting what one might do, but at that time, I mean, so I understood. I said, but it's got to be, we got to be able to present this through very sophisticated investors and have it make some sense and be plausible. But reality is that the investors who invested in our company, it was 144 of them. Really what they were buying into was just myself and Bernie.”
2017-12-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Live Episode! The Home Depot: Arthur Blank · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We did the business plan together and Bernie and Bernie lived in the San Fernando Valley, for those of you that know LA, it's a three hour to a three-day drive to get from Orange County to San Fernando Valley. So we would talk a lot by phone and I would develop really all the business plans and work on the models and things of that nature. I would send them to him. He would look at him. Oh, we'd meet at a coffee shop that was somewhere in the middle, which we met at, I don't know how many times, but they had a table there that was kind of named after us. And we kept developing this model and developing it. And finally, I remember one night I had, you know, all these papers spread out on our dining room table. And I called Bernie and I said, you know, listen, partner, I mean, I've applied five years of experience in a large public accounting firm, my own business experience, my experience running a chain of drugstores, and these numbers don't add up.”
2017-12-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Live Episode! The Home Depot: Arthur Blank · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Looking at a lot of different alternatives, we wanted to think about outside the box. And Bernie had said, well, you know, if we ever to leapfrog our own business, handy down home improvement centers, what kind of home improvement center store could we not compete against? And so we said we could never compete against the big warehouse, no frills, downmarket, low prices, great service, great services. So instead of kind of taking that handy Dan model of the fours, $4 million, 40% margin, 40 staff people, et cetera, we said, let's try to leapfrog the industry dramatically.”
2017-12-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Live Episode! The Home Depot: Arthur Blank · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I was shocked, but given the financial background that I had, we had saved up some money. I wanted to take my time as did Bernie and think through the options that we had. He was still a filly young man at that point as well. And didn't want to rush into anything. So I took basically the better part of the year off. I did a lot of running, ran my first marathon that year, spent a lot of time with my kids. I mean, I did a lot of things that I... Wanted to do”
2017-12-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Live Episode! The Home Depot: Arthur Blank · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, she didn't believe me. She was a joke. She said, Well, I mean, how can it be fired? I said, Well, I try to explain, you know, political. Strife in the business context Sahar. And so I said, I still don't believe you. I said, well, I'm going to get in the car and start driving home. And by the time I got home, Wall Street Journal had called the house, the LA Times had called the house, the Orange County newspaper called. I mean, there were people on the phone that wanted to talk to me. So I walked in the house. She said, I guess you weren't joking, were you? I said, no, not.”
2017-12-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Live Episode! The Home Depot: Arthur Blank · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, yes, I was shocked. Yeah, I mean, at that time, we were running the most successful Home Improvement Center company in the United States. And Bernie. And what is his name? Sandy's merciless ming. He and Bernie would get into fights during board meetings. They both were very self-confident, strong people. Sandy had a difficult time because basically all the profitability, all the cash flow from Dalen was coming from this home improvement center company. Bernie was properly taking credit for the results that we were producing, Sandy didn't like that. So this was a war of the Giants and they owned more stock. than we did and so called my wife and I told her and she started laughing”
2017-12-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Live Episode! The Home Depot: Arthur Blank · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, that company, Handing Down Home Improvement Centers, was, and we operated kind of a traditional model, 40,000 square feet, 40% gross margin, 40 associates on the floor. And it was by far the most successful chain of home improvement center stores in the country then, and we had a tax treaty with our parent company, parent company being Dalin. And so we would send our tax monies instead of going to the government, we sent it directly to Dale and so we were a favorite child in that company because we were kind of keeping the company afloat, if you will, with our tax money.”
2017-12-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Live Episode! The Home Depot: Arthur Blank · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, Bernie, he's 14 years my senior. He's probably a combination of brother and a father figure. Having lost my dad and a rabbi, I mean, he's always considered himself to be a rabbi. And so he's a great storyteller. I'm a great joke teller. I'm not a great storyteller, but I'm a great audience. He would tell the same stories, and I would keep laughing at the same story. It was like a great partnership because he loved hearing, you know, me laugh. And it was like a marriage. It was like a marriage. It was like a very good marriage.”
2017-12-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Live Episode! The Home Depot: Arthur Blank · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I have six wonderful children, and my wife has three children, and I always consider the Home Depot to be my seventh child.”
2017-12-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Live Episode! The Home Depot: Arthur Blank · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, just to be clear, the drugstore business we were running was actually very profitable. Want to be clear on that. We are making a lot of money The parent, the parent company had no money to give us for expansion, and I didn't want to be part of that. I didn't want to be just maintaining 75 stores until I got 75 years old. Decided then either I was going to leave or whatever, and they offered me this opportunity in California to work with Bernie, and Bernie and I had been very close. So then I went to work for Bernie in California at Handy Dan Home Improvement Centers. My wife then didn't want to go to California because she was positive that we would be consumed by a quake of some sort, but she ended up coming and we ended up having some kids there. I've had kids all over. You name and age I have a child.”
2017-12-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Live Episode! The Home Depot: Arthur Blank · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Dalen was a conglomerate when that word was really fancy and drew high P ratios. The great majority of the company ended up being in bankruptcy. I was running a chain of drugstores. I originally started out as We were the only part of the company that was making any money, and they had a small home improvement center company in California called Handy Dan Home Improvement Centers. They were also making a little bit of money, but the rest of the company is all losing money. So I had an option to stay there and continue just to run the business as it was or potentially go to California. I met my partner at HD, Bernie Marcus through Dalen. Bernie was running the discount store division for them. That wasn't doing well. And so at that time I was 24 or 5 years old. I mean, I was a young man”
2017-12-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Live Episode! The Home Depot: Arthur Blank · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“For five years. But I kind of realized during that period of time I didn't want to spend the rest of my life recording what other people were doing and making sure the books are balanced and all that kind of stuff and giving good audit advice. But I wanted to be on the other side of the desk, if you will, where I actually could help make the decisions and help drive the business and build the businesses”
2017-12-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Live Episode! The Home Depot: Arthur Blank · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I think really what happened after my dad died. We talk about what's going to happen to the family business. We had hoped my mother would get remarried. She exceeded our wishes. She did several times over. She would laugh at that too. She doesn't throw my mother would think that would be very funny. But in any event, so my brother was going to take over the pharmaceutical end of the business and I would take over the business end of the business. So that was really the plan. He went to pharmacy school. I went to business school and was able to develop some skills in terms of how to work with others and be inclusive and be a good leader. So that was very important for me in college.”
2017-12-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Live Episode! The Home Depot: Arthur Blank · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I did the family laundry and just did a variety of things to support the house as best I could and try to be as good a friend to my mother as I could be. I remember periodically I would take her and go bowling and I remember one time she was very young looking. Somebody would ask me well is that your girlfriend? I said, no, that's my mother actually. It's not actually my girlfriend. But she was always very young at heart, very young in spirit. She loved to dance. very much of a caring person.”
2017-12-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Live Episode! The Home Depot: Arthur Blank · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“My dad was a pharmacist. He passed away when he was 44. I was 15 at the time. Several years before that, he was working for his brother in a retail drugstore. And he started his own pharmaceutical distribution company to hospitals and nursing homes and doctors across the country. When he passed away, my mother was only 37 at the time without any business background. She went in and started to run the business. My mother was one of these people, which, you know, failure was not part of her vocabulary, and she was going to succeed, and she was going to do whatever it took to be successful in the business. And I would go to school, and I was playing football then and do my football practice, come home, I'd start dinner.”
2017-12-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Live Episode! The Home Depot: Arthur Blank · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly. We lived in a small apartment. It was a one bedroom apartment, one bathroom. We shared that, shared actually, my brother and I shared the bedroom and my mom and dad slept in a little pullout thing in the foyer. I went out in the morning, stayed out all day, and came home when it got dark.”
2017-12-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Live Episode! The Home Depot: Arthur Blank · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Not as expected. That'd be a mild statement. So we agreed, we weren't going to talk to each other in the morning, open up the two stores, and my three older children, they were each given $500 in $1 bills. So at six o'clock at night, they were standing in front of the store still handing out $1 bills. So we had this grand opening and nobody came.”
2017-12-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Live Episode! The Home Depot: Arthur Blank · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT