The Heart of an Entrepreneur: A Conversation with Larry Morgan

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:00

Welcome to Bon Vivant Chic, Life Well Lived, the podcast for anyone who wants to cut through today's noise and just listen for a few minutes to meaningful conversations on the human experience and the power of connectedness. I'm your host, Ernestine Morgan, an advocate for kindness with a passion for showcasing human interest stories that matter. Today, I'm chatting with my first guest, who just happens to be my husband, Larry Morgan. Please welcome Larry, a diehard entrepreneur and family man, and the most impressive octogenarian. Larry, thanks for sitting down with me today. Happy to do it, sweetie. Can you please share a little about where you grew up and what life was like?

SPEAKER_00: 0:43

I was born in a farmhouse without a doctor's assistance in rural Missouri. Without anyone helping my mother, we had a simple life. I had a sister two years younger, good parents, hard workers, very simple people. My mother was a school teacher. She was born in 1905 and got a college degree, which was quite something in those days. My father never graduated from high school. They came from diverse backgrounds in rural Missouri. We lived that life until I went to college. We did a lot of things as a family. My dad and I were avid hunters and fishermen, and he was a big promoter of my sports life. And of course, my mom was always right there as well. We had a little 16-foot john boat that we kept on the Mississippi River that in today's standards would be called a dinghy to a 25-foot boat. We would fish on the river and we'd water ski and have cookouts and sit on the sandbars all around Hannibal, Missouri, which of course is the home of Mark Twain. Pretty simple life. I remember my first time seeing a TV was when Eisenhower was running for president. We had a neighbor that was a staunch Republican and invited us to their house. It was about the size of a paper plate and it was Real fuzzy, you could hardly see anything. A few years later, we got a TV. On Saturday night, a whole bunch of the farm community would come to our house. It was only two stations, but the big deal was Saturday night wrestling. Some of the farm guys, the older people, they loved that. We were always the social spot on Saturday night. Growing up, my favorite program was Cactus Gym, and he advertised Prairie Farms chocolate milk. And I still see it. You rub your tummy and say, Prairie Farms chocolate milk, yum. good or something to that effect. Then he went from there to advertising on the Saturday Night Wrestling and selling Falstaff beer. In those days, you could actually drink on TV, and by the end of the wrestling program, he'd be pretty tipsy.

SPEAKER_01: 2:43

You were, what, 11 years old when you got plumbing?

SPEAKER_00: 2:46

Yeah, that was a big deal in our life. I don't know if anybody's ever tried to go to the John in February in Missouri when it's 10 degrees below zero. A little challenging. That was a big excitement, that, and having a shower. And in the summertime, my dad, before we had the indoor plumbing, he had a tank that he would fill with water and hung it in a tree. And that was our shower, which was a very refreshing but a unique way to have a shower.

SPEAKER_01: 3:13

Also, the party line for the telephone.

SPEAKER_00: 3:16

I don't know how many families were on the same line. You pick up the phone, you could hear someone else having a conversation. And even if you were talking, you could hear people picking up and hanging the phone up, clicking and all that. Then I think we progressed to where there was only three or four families on the party line. And who's Straight Arrow? Oh, he's my buddy. He's really a mythical guy, of course. Shredded wheat boxes in between the layers of shredded wheat were these little cards. And Straight Arrow gave all kinds of instructions and showed ways to survive in the wilderness and how you could hunt animals and things like that, how you could use nature to shelter for yourself. It was just something that I really love. So I could get to the straight arrow cars. And your mom was a teacher and she taught you. Yeah, several years. Kids found out real quick. All they had to do is point the finger at me and she would convict me as guilty and consequently get the punishment, whether I was guilty or not. I remember my parents took over the payments of my dad's grandfather's farm and they were losing the farm during the Great Depression. My mom and dad, frankly, were poor. A tragic thing that happened to them was that they had two bank accounts. They had one account where they kept their money and they had another bank that had the mortgage on their farm. Unfortunately, the bank that had their money went broke. There was no federal insurance for deposits in those days. So consequently, they lost everything they had. But the bank that they owed the money to stayed in business. I remember pigs were a valuable commodity. They'd grow up to be big pigs and they could either be sold or they could be butchered for food. And so my mom told the story about she's sitting there in a barn by hand milking a cow, and this little pig kept irritating the cow, and the cow would move around, making it difficult to milk the cow. So my mom picked up a peddle and threw it at the little pig and hit him between the eyes, and he, bang, just went right to the ground and was passed out. And my mom was terrified because she knew that someday that would be a real asset. According to her, she said, here, little piggy, piggy, please don't die. Please don't die, little piggy. And all of a sudden, the little pig got up and ran. off and my mom was so happy. Those are tough stories, but funny. I remember once going to the other first grader in my class's house and he shared his bedroom with three other brothers and sisters. He had a dirt floor. I think that's when I recognized that I didn't want to be poor and that maybe we were rich. You were an entrepreneur when you were young. I did a lot of things to make money. I really appreciate what my mom and dad kind of helped me learn to survive on my own I can remember when I was really little I would buy a hundred chickens and they would come the postman would bring them and maybe they were a day old and I would grow them up till they were eating size and then I would obviously kill the chickens and we called it dressing them but getting them ready and then I would sell them to people that wanted chickens in addition to my chicken business one of the other things I did I raised a calf and sold that as well I had a trap line and what that means is that I would go out during daylight and find a place where I thought animals would be roaming, and they typically would move at night. So I'd set these steel traps, and depending on what kind of an animal I was trying to trap would determine the size of the trap that I would place in the walkway wherever I thought they would be. And then early the next morning, I would go out and run my trap line and see if I caught anything. And the whole purpose was, whatever I caught, I obviously killed it, and then I skinned it and And then every month I would go to the store in town and sell my pelts, kind of like what the fur traders did back when settling America. I did that for several years and made quite a bit of money. And I remember I get 25 cents for a possum, a buck and a quarter for a raccoon. I caught one mink that I think was$20 and I thought I could retire on that. So there were ups and downs to being a fur trader. What about the fireworks? Well, I started out working for a friend of my dad who... had a firework stand and wanted to open a second one, and he needed somebody to run the one he originally ran. So I did that and eventually went out on my own. I got a location at this big truck stop. I had a really big stand there, and I slept in it at night. I had a big sign outside with a light on it that says, ring the bell for 24-hour service. So when I would close the stand up at, say, 10 o'clock at night, truckers would drive all night long. They'd see the sign, and most of them were heading east toward Illinois and beyond, and they couldn't buy a there. So Missouri was really a place to buy them. They would ring my bell and I'd get up in the middle of the night and sell them some fireworks and go back to sleep. And then I worked a full-time job during the day. And my mom and some other people helped run it early in the morning until I got off from work for my regular job. So when I graduated from college, I had enough money to buy a new boat and a new car. So that was a successful financial experience.

SPEAKER_01: 8:24

Who was the biggest influence on you when you were young?

SPEAKER_00: 8:27

My mom. Yeah. My dad was a close second, but they were two entirely different people. My dad was very fiery and kind of rough around the edges. And my mom was quiet and sweet and probably more thoughtful and gave me a lot of good advice when I was growing up.

SPEAKER_01: 8:45

You've had a very successful career. What was your first job and how did it shape you?

SPEAKER_00: 8:50

You mean my first real job, like out of college? I went to work for Firestone after graduating from college and I was fortunate enough to get put in what they called their college management class. And there was 100 people in that class, believe it or not, all men. We spent several weeks in Akron learning about what our career path could look like and other important issues. And then we were assigned a specific job in the company. Fast forward, I was determined to get to those levels of growth, promotion, if you will. And I wanted to obviously beat everybody else in the class. And fortunately, that turned out to be the case. When I left Firestone. I was 28 years old and the next youngest person with the same job was 45. So they treated me well. I worked really hard and I accomplished a lot. I knew I didn't want to work for corporate America. I had seen some people who were in business for themselves in the same business, Tire and Auto Center world. And that's what encouraged me to do it for myself.

SPEAKER_01: 9:51

What are some of the most rewarding moments in your career?

SPEAKER_00: 9:54

I always like to win. I like to win, whether it be sports or business or whatever. whatever the case might be. In the business world, your P&L pretty well tells you whether you're a winner or a loser. So I always worked really hard to excel and get good results. I often describe myself as a growthaholic. You have to be successful and make enough money to fuel the cost of growth. After I left Firestone, I went to run this company that had seven stores in Northern Virginia. The founder had always blamed Firestone for his failure to have a successful business. I would tell him that his problems with the way he ran his business wasn't Firestone's fault. So one day he said, young, smart aleck, why don't you come and run my business, which I did and grew it immensely, made the family wealthy. And when it was all said and done, I didn't feel like they treated me very well. And I left the company. It was a hard thing for me to do. And it was the best thing that ever happened in my life. And I moved to Florida and bought a little business called Don Olson with 30 stores. I put every title to real estate, to cars, all myself. savings account, literally everything I had on the line to have enough money to buy that business. I can remember my biggest competitor in Florida was Tire Kingdom, and I wanted to buy that company. And I had a friend who was an international financer named Roy Damani, who had close ties with Goldman Sachs and Goldman Sachs owned Tire Kingdom. So he got me an appointment there, and their understanding was that I was coming to talk to them about them buying me. When I got there, I switched directions and told them that I wanted to buy them. And I'm sitting in a conference room with 10 or 12 of these three-piece suit Ivy League dudes. And one of them said to me something about that they were a big elephant because they did have more stores. What they didn't know was that I had access to their financial statements and I knew I was making a lot more money in my company than they were. So when the one young man said something about, you're lucky that our elephant hasn't eaten your minnow or something of that effect, I came back with a retort that just blew everybody's mind. It just shut them down quickly. And I'll never forget it. It was one of the greatest experiences of my life to be able to put those Ivy Leaguers in their place, if you will. And 10 years later, I sold Tires Plus at 630 stores. And then after I sold Tires Plus, I tell everybody I hit golf balls for three days and got bored, which was true right after the I partnered with four people that I knew. All of them were previous bankers. They put their life savings in non-automotive businesses. I was the majority owner and supported them financially, and they ran the business, and we eventually sold all three of the businesses, and they're all still good friends. I've been part of starting up three de novo banks, and all those banks succeeded, did very, very well. They were sold to bigger banks, and all the stockholders of those banks did very well financially. I've had three careers of growing businesses and I'm still going. On the charity side, the one thing I always remember is after I gave the money to build the Morgan Heart Hospital, I was at a function one evening and one of the people there had stood up, made an announcement about my gift. And this lady that was a server came running over to me. She was crying, saying, you saved my mother's life. Her family were indigent. Her mother was at a very serious heart ailment and went to the Morgan Heart Hospital and how well they treated her and made him feel like royalty and her mother recovered and was healthy and happy. That was a great reward for me to just hear that lady say what she said and it's resonated with me over and over the last probably at least 20 years.

SPEAKER_01: 13:49

Were there any pivotal moments or decisions that changed the course of your life?

SPEAKER_00: 13:53

I think having the guts to be an entrepreneur and to put my money on the line and grow a small business business to a big business was something that was real telling for me. And then, of course, going into the automobiles business with my son, Brett, which has just been a terrific experience. That business will do$11 billion in revenue this year. So we're really proud of that. Getting a divorce, frankly, that was a tough decision, a stressful time in my life. And then later I meet you and we get married. Sometimes the experiences you have are good and sometimes they're not so good, but they're all meaningful in a lifetime.

SPEAKER_01: 14:30

You mentioned that there were three days or so between Tires Plus and your next endeavor. I think you said you were in your 50s and trying to live a retired life. What

SPEAKER_00: 14:40

happened? Brad tells the story best. He says, I simply failed miserably at retirement. And he's 100% right. I was hitting golf balls all day long. And I said, gosh, I need to do something that's more exciting and fulfilling than this. And that's when I went out and took on those non-automotive business challenges with with friends of mine. And then, of course, getting in the automobile business with Brett and starting out with one store and building it up to 76 right now. Those are good memories that I will never forget. I've certainly enjoyed living in Florida. I think the older you get, the more experience you get. When you look back, you can see things that happened that you're proud of and had a good life.

SPEAKER_01: 15:23

Are you happy?

SPEAKER_00: 15:24

Yeah, I'm very happy. I love my life. I love my career. I I love my children, my grandchildren, my wife, and I have a lot of friends. I'm blessed and live a good life and very happy. I'm a happy person. A few people might at times question that because I still am driven and I recognize that and I push, if you want to call it a word, motivate people. I take my business life very seriously. Frankly, I take everything I do in life pretty seriously, whether it be my exercise routine, I value my friends, I take that seriously. I think if you set goals, If you're accomplishing your goals, if you have something to look forward to, whether it be yourself, whether it be your children, whether it be helping a friend, what creates happiness for me, doing good things for other people. I'm fortunate enough to be healthy. I couldn't ask for anything more.

SPEAKER_01: 16:14

What lessons about family and relationships would you pass on to the younger generation?

SPEAKER_00: 16:19

There are distractions in life that can pull a person away from the things that are really important. And there is nothing more important than family. And some people would say, I'm a workaholic, and that's where my focus in life's been. But I can assure you, I never missed an event for my children. I was always there. Sometimes it meant I paid the price later on that day or night and had to go back to work. But that's really important. I think setting goals. I've done it for probably 50 years. End of December of every year, I write down my goals for the coming year. For several years in business, I basically encourage all my teammates, employees, if you will, to have a goal card. And on The goal card on the one side was five goals, personal goals, and five business goals. The agreement was that anybody could ask you to see your goal card. And I always carried mine in my suit coat pocket. And people would say, Mr. Morgan, can I see your goal card? And so I'd give it to them. And setting goals is paramount. And that's what I would encourage anybody to do. And I remember once when I was a fairly young man, maybe 30 years old, I sat down and did a calculation of what I wanted my net worth to be. 10 years, 20 years from that. And I'll never forget how surprised I was at the end of the first 10 years, how close I was of accomplishing the financial goals that I'd set for myself 10 years ago. So I would say for young people to set goals and to be determined to make them and don't waver, you'll be well rewarded, whatever the goal might be. There's nothing more important than family. And I'm so proud of my three children, Lauren, Brianna, and Brett. And actually, I'll change that to five children because my son-in-law, Whit, and my soon-to-be son-in-law, Zachary, are just all great people. And then I've got two granddaughters. They're the sweetest little girls that ever lived. I've been blessed and able to have those people around me. It's been so rewarding for me to see my children grow up and be successful people and be great parents and great spouses, great community leaders, very philanthropic, kind, ambitious, and highly motivated. So I think that being there for family when they need you, there's nothing more important.

SPEAKER_01: 18:34

What are some life lessons you've learned that you wish you knew earlier?

SPEAKER_00: 18:37

I had a friend who his father was in the oil drilling business. So he told me they had this patch of land that they were just sure had oil underneath it. They were putting together a syndication to finance the project. So for me, at the time I doled out, I thought it was a lot of money for me. And the long story is the oil wells were dry. So obviously I lost every penny. But nothing ventured, nothing gained. And sometimes business is risk. Everything's risk. Those are lessons in life. They teach you things. You have to also, depending on what your goals in life are, sometimes you have to take chances to take risks. And that's never seemed to bother me a whole lot. I always have considered my employees as family. I try to treat them that way. I think that served me well over the years. And I think future generations would be served well if they took that same approach in their work environment. What

SPEAKER_01: 19:28

advice would you give to

SPEAKER_00: 19:29

someone in their 20s and 30s?

SPEAKER_01: 19:58

What would you say keeps you inspired or motivated?

SPEAKER_00: 20:00

In my case, I think it's just something inside me. It's hard for me to describe. As I talked a few minutes ago about goal setting, that definitely motivates me. Being good at what we do, a good example would be I look at reports from, we have 31 auto brands, 31 different in our 76 stores. Practically every day, each one of those 31 brands puts out a kind of a ranking report on sales and things of that nature. and i want our stores to be best and then there are other times where we compare financial results with other competitors i always want to be up there i want to be good and it's not always the money it's personal pride i think that those are things that have always motivated me how

SPEAKER_01: 20:46

do you stay so fit and keep your energy level so high to continue to do what you do on a daily basis

SPEAKER_00: 20:52

i'm very disciplined with my exercise and workout routine there's times that i'm in the gym and i looking at my watch because I feel like I need to get to work. I've always watched my weight and I've exercised a lot. I realized that to give yourself a chance to be healthy, you need to be strong and fit. I used to think sleeping was a waste of time. That's not the case anymore. There's days that I come home and I know I'm tired. Mentally, I'm tired and physically, I'm tired. But that's basically the only difference from how I feel from the way I felt 30 years ago.

SPEAKER_01: 21:24

What does a week in the life of Larry Morgan look like?

SPEAKER_00: 21:27

I get up pretty pretty early in the morning. I try to work out five days a week. I have my calendar. It's just basically a things to do list, if you will. And I always prepare it the night before I go to bed. So when I wake up in the morning, it's all right there, what I need to accomplish. That's a great way to start your day, knowing exactly where you're going and what needs to be done. Don't get me wrong. There are days that other people come in an emergency situation and occupy your time and throw you off course. But that's just the way it is. That's not unique to me. So I think focused, having goals, and being determined to accomplish those things is what motivates me.

SPEAKER_01: 22:04

As you know, I've been in the philanthropic space for 25 years, and philanthropy means different things to different people. What does philanthropy mean to you?

SPEAKER_00: 22:15

Some people can give their time. Some other people, they can give their money. Some other people have leadership skills, and I've done all those things. I got into healthcare volunteerism, the financing committee at Morton Plant. Meese wanted a business person on the finance committee. So they drafted me and I never forget the first meeting I went to. I left and I said, golly, I have a solution for all those problems. And so the next meeting I presented my solutions and I found out about half of them were against the law because healthcare had their own unique ways. I think volunteerism is terrific. Originally the JCPenney Classic, we were about to lose the golf tournament. We didn't have a sponsor. We'd had the sponsors that came for a year or two and then they drop out. So here I am, the chairman with no sponsor and PGA Tour had told me if we didn't get a sponsor soon, they were going to move the tournament to another city. I spent six or eight months along with one person from the PGA Tour, literally traveling the whole United States, making calls on big corporations that we felt could be potential sponsors for our golf tournament. And it seemed like it was just a A few weeks before the deadline for us to lose the tournament and to leave the Tampa Bay area, I was able to connect with Valspar. And that's been many years ago. And Valspar is still the sponsor of the tournament. And it's been extremely successful. And it gives away tens of millions of dollars every year for charitable causes. At one point in time, it was a very pressure position to be in. But I look back at it now and say, golly, I'm sure glad we made the effort and were able to keep the tournament here. And it's been great for our community. And

SPEAKER_01: 23:58

Tracy West has done a phenomenal job.

SPEAKER_00: 24:00

Yeah, I hired Tracy, which was one of the best things I did in our business. I did it at Tires Plus. Brett and I got in the car business and I do it here at Morgan Auto Group. We have what we call our Helping Hand Fund, which is basically where employees can make a request. It's people that have a crisis in their life, whether it be a health crisis or their grandmother passed away in Seattle and they don't have enough money to get there, whatever the case may be. But we have an anonymous committee that decides whether the people should get the money or not. And consequently, I get emails, voicemails, letters of people expressing how grateful they are for the help that we gave them when they were down and out. And that has always been something for the last 30 plus years that has given me great satisfaction. And it still does today. We've given away millions and millions of dollars through the Helping Hand Fund and the two businesses that I've owned. And ironically, each one of those businesses had 8,000 teammates each. So we took care of a lot of families that way. I think that I'm doing good for people. There's just a lot of different ways and it means different things to people and I've done them all. It makes me feel good. I'll tell you this, I get great satisfaction out of seeing my children in their role in philanthropy.

SPEAKER_01: 25:18

Thank you so much, Larry, for joining me in this conversation about the human experience.

SPEAKER_00: 25:23

My pleasure. Thank you. Love you. Love you too.

SPEAKER_01: 25:27

Thanks for listening to Bon Vivant Chic, Life Well Lived. I hope you'll tune in for more meaningful stories on the human experience and share with family and friends. All the episodes are available on Spotify, Buzzsprout, and on my website, bonvivantschic.com. Till next time, remember, every day is a gift. Live it. Kindness matters.