“Business & Philanthropy” with Cal Turner Jr.

Show Notes:

Once again, Eddie and Chris are joined by Cal Turner Jr, the former chairman and CEO of Dollar General, a chain of stores founded by his father Cal Turner Sr. 

Cal earned his Bachelor of Arts degree from Vanderbilt University in 1962 then joined the Dollar General corporation in 1965. His first job was sweeping the warehouse floor, but he worked his way up to being president in 1977 and then chairman in 1988. He served as chairman and CEO until 2003.

Cal’s faith led him through several very difficult moments with his family and their growing business, especially 1988 when he had to fire his brother as Chief Operating Officer, his mother passed away unexpectedly, and then he had to force his father to retire from the Board. But through it all, the love of God guided him and held him strong, so that when he retired in 2003, his successors could be even more successful than he had, and allowed him to focus more on philanthropy and giving back to the families that built his family’s fortune.

Transcript:

Chris McAlilly 00:00 I'm Chris McAlilly.

Eddie Rester 00:01
And I'm Eddie Rester. Welcome to The Weight.

Chris McAlilly 00:03

Today we're talking again to Cal Turner Jr. In our last episode, we were exploring some of Cal's story, his family of origin, how faith impacted his life and the trajectory of his story. And today, we're talking about how he grew his business, Dollar General, and then the journey that he had after retirement in philanthropy.

Eddie Rester 00:28

You know, Cal and his family were very successful in business. And a lot of times when that happens, it simply becomes about the business. And I think what he discovered in life is that there has to be more to that--more to life than just that. And so, it was interesting hearing from him about what it took to grow, just an extremely successful business, but then also what it meant for him to invest in his community, to invest, specifically, in some of the ways that he did.

Chris McAlilly 01:02
Yeah, I think that one of the things I appreciate about Cal is his honesty. There's a lot of wisdom in Cal, moving from a family-owned business to an independent organization, ultimately, into a publicly traded company, it came with a lot of very difficult decisions, decisions that impacted his relationships with members of his family. And he's very honest about both the pain, the struggle of some of that, but also some of the lessons that he learned. And I think the turn towards philanthropy, I think it's fascinating to hear him talk through some of the reasons he got started in philanthropy in the first place. Some of the things that he learned from his father and his grandfather about how to be a person who cares deeply about the people and the places that you find yourself. And I think that regardless of your journey, whatever it is that you're building, however you want to make an impact to those around you, I think there's something that you're going to gain from this conversation.

Eddie Rester 02:07

Cal is one of those people who is a blessing for a whole lot of reasons. And I hope you experienced that as you enjoy the episode today. Like it, share it, leave us review, help us get the word out about what we're doing with The Weight. So we hope you enjoy today's episode.

Eddie Rester 02:23

[INTRO] Life can be heavy. We carry around with us the weight of our doubt, our pain, our suffering, our mental health, our family system, our politics. This is a podcast to create space for all of that.

Chris McAlilly 02:36

We want to talk about these things with humility, charity, and intellectual honesty. But more than that, we want to listen. It's time to open up our echo chamber. Welcome to The Weight. [END INTRO]

Chris McAlilly 02:51

Well, we're, we're back again with Cal Turner, and we're so grateful for the first couple of conversations that we've had on faith and family. And we want to shift gears in this conversation and the next one to talk about your business and kind of the work you've done in philanthropy. I wonder if you could just go back and give us some of the details about when the business was started by your grandfather. J. L. Turner and Son, and that was in the 1930s. I assume that was also in Kentucky. What year did that get started and kind of what was the business through time?

Cal Turner Jr. 03:35

Well, I have to go back before the founding of the company to answer the question correctly. As I've already said, my grandfather at 11 years of age, became a farmer. And he had heavily mortgaged farm, three younger siblings and a widowed mother. And he was the head of the family. That was the founding of the family business, but it was farming. It was farming. And then because Luther Turner was the hardest working farmer in the area, he was the one to open their first farmers Co-Op store. And in the stock room, he made harnesses to sell and retailing was so much easier than farming that he went into retailing. And he was his grammar wasn't bad, it was atrocious. I would cringe in embarrassment at my grandfather's grammar. That's why I'm a nut about good grammar today. But I loved him. I loved him and he loved me.

Cal Turner Jr. 05:17

And there was so much to admire about him, but he wanted to work for a wholesaler in Nashville, and they wouldn't give him a job. He said, "Look, just give me your sales sheets," he called them, "and pay me on commission. Don't pay me anything, just pay me a commission on what I sell." And he did very well working for them, very well working for them. Because that was Luther Turner, that work ethic, that drive to get ahead and provide for his family was his prime mover. By the way, years later, our consulting psychologist, when he met my father said, "Mr. Turner, I know Cal Jr's personal mission. What was yours, Mr. Turner?" Nobody's ever asked Daddy that. And Daddy, he gave him his one word answer: "Survival."

Eddie Rester 06:38 Yeah.

Cal Turner Jr. 06:40
Survival. And I thought that's a compelling mission, isn't it?

Eddie Rester 06:47
That's a very compelling mission. I think a lot of businesses early on that's the motivation.

Chris McAlilly 06:53

And it was also during the Great Depression, this is the 1930s. So that is a deeper level of survival, and desire to provide. What happened at that time and then how did it shape your father specifically?

Cal Turner Jr. 07:10

Well, as as we have said, my dad was a part of the family business because he was more educated than my [grand]father. And then my dad actually got a job with the same wholesale company, Neely Harwell in Nashville, Tennessee, because he was Luther's son. And Luther was, perhaps, their best salesman. And my dad had finished his freshman year at Vanderbilt, in engineering, and had not told his parents that he decided he wasn't going to do any more college. He wasn't going to do any more college. So he got a summer job with Neely Harwell, not telling his parents that it was not a summer--it was full time.

Eddie Rester 08:19 A real job, yeah.

Cal Turner Jr. 08:20

Full time. And so he worked for a wholesale company, Luther Turner work for a wholesale company. So in Scottsville, Kentucky when this big brick building became available, ta-da! J.L. Turner and Son Wholesale.

Chris McAlilly 08:40
Right. Yeah. And this was a time where there were a lot of troubled stores.

Cal Turner Jr. 08:45 Oh, yeah.

Chris McAlilly 08:46

And so there was a need. So kind of the business opportunity was buying and liquidating. And I guess the skill that your father had was the ability to get in there and assess very quickly what the inventory was, and you know, tally it all up and then buy it for half price. You mentioned that.

Cal Turner Jr. 09:06
Yes. And that was so intimidating to me, Chris, that he had that innate genius. He was the quintessential entrepreneur. It's hard to follow that kind of dynamism in your father.

Chris McAlilly 09:29 I bet.

Eddie Rester 09:30

But you brought a different gift when you came into the company. When did the company shift from J.L. Turner and Sons to Dollar General? What made that shift? When did that happen?

Cal Turner Jr. 09:43

Well, my dad... Well, let me back up. Luther Turner was an amazing talent. He owned half of the company J.L. Turner and Son. And Cal Turner on the other half. That's why it was J.L. Turner and Son. Luther Turner had saved his money. And his philosophy was save something out of every single check you receive. Don't wait for the bonus you're going to get. Save something, something out of every check. And he was the financial backing of my father. And so they did go into the business, and my father, better educated, after all he'd had all the way through his freshman year at Vanderbilt. He had that education.

Cal Turner Jr. 10:52

And the company was positioned to go public by my father who, everything he did, he just seemed to pull a decision out of thin air. And he said, "Son, we're going public. And you're in charge." He said, "You've had accounting courses." We didn't have a Chief Financial Officer. We didn't have a budget. We did not even have consolidated financials. We just had reports on every store.

Cal Turner Jr. 11:32

And on the warehouse. Every week, we had a full P&L on each store. The way he had simplified the business under the Dollar General model. He had gotten it so simple as a wholesaler retailer, and it was my dad's decision after the Second World War that wholesaling wasn't going to survive. Because you're not in touch with the customer. You got to have a retailer to whom you sell as a wholesaler. "Dad," he said to Luther Turner, "we've got to go into retailing. The market's changing."

Chris McAlilly 11:32 Wow.

Chris McAlilly 12:21

One of the things I want to pick up before we push forward to the changing market is one of the paragraphs from your book, "My Father's Business," you say "From the beginning, my dad ran the business and Luther the grandfather served as a loving mentor and a worrier. In fact, Cal's hunger for growth, for more and more stores worried Luther a great deal. Cal had a young man's ambition. Luther in his mid 50s had an older man's caution. At one point, Luther bought a farm and put it in Josephine's name,"

Cal Turner Jr. 12:51 Grandma Turner's name.

Chris McAlilly 12:52
Grandma Turner's name, "so that if the company went under all of them could return to the land and start over." That is such a great paragraph.

Cal Turner Jr. 13:00

Oh, that was it. That was Luther. And what I meant to tell you earlier about Luther, he began giving away as much of his ownership of the company as he could. He gave the largest amount he could annually to his wife, to his daughter-in-law, and to each of his four grandchildren. And at his death, he owned nothing of the company.

Chris McAlilly 13:33 Wow.

Cal Turner Jr. 13:33

Because over the years, he, kinda like he had saved from every paycheck, he had given away to his family, his ownership. He was a blessing to me as a model of someone who performed in life for others. And that later became the two-word mission statement of the company: serving others. It's about others. Life is not about me and us, it's about others. It's about loving your neighbor as yourself as your opportunity to love God even more.

Eddie Rester 14:23
One of the things that I just keep thinking about is that there's a lot of chaos when a company

is growing and changing as quickly as your company did.

Cal Turner Jr. 14:34 Oh, absolutely.

Eddie Rester 14:35

My dad owned a small pharmacy that grew a lot when I was growing up. But I can't even begin to imagine. You've got all these stores and you've got this growing company and a chain continuing, changing market that y'all faced. How did you personally manage chaos or deal with the chaos all around you?

Cal Turner Jr. 15:00

Well, I never could deal with the chaos all around me. I had to have a sense of my choice of the chaos that needed the most attention now.

Eddie Rester 15:12 Yeah.

Cal Turner Jr. 15:15

And when we started strategic planning, we learned the precepts of planning and got our management team together. But as we did it--every three years, we did it--we learned that the key wasn't so much the quality of your plan, as it was the quality of implementation of that plan. And that quality has to do with the culture of the management group--how well we come together and define the individual contributions of everyone that will coordinate into the power of the whole to grow and to implement our objectives of growth. And so we called it planning on the run.

Eddie Rester 16:30 Right.

Cal Turner Jr. 16:31
And we learned more on the run, as we were trying to implement the plan, than we did in the office where we tried to come up with the plan.

Chris McAlilly 16:46
There are a couple of chapters, the titles of the chapters are great: "Dealing with Entrepreneurial Chaos," and then also the next one is "Winging It with Wall Street."

Cal Turner Jr. 16:56 Oh, yeah.

Chris McAlilly 16:57

So talk about that. So you're taking leadership of a company at a time where the company is growing expansively, set on a trajectory by your father's entrepreneurial ambition and drive and talent. And what you're being asked to do over the course of time, it becomes clear, is that the family business has to change.

Cal Turner Jr. 17:20

Yeah, yes. Yes, indeed, the family business had to change. And, again, it it took failure and pain to learn the strategic lesson that we needed to address. Our company, which was a family business that had had the benefit of going public. And as a CEO trying to learn what in the heck it is to be a CEO, I was tutored then by Wall Street and their expectation of us. I had to explain to Wall Street who we were and they didn't have anybody else to compare us to. We weren't a dime store, a variety store. We were not a discount store. We weren't a drugstore or grocery store. We were a dollar store. What the heck is a dollar store?

Chris McAlilly 18:39
You had a public relations problem.

Cal Turner Jr. 18:41
Oh, yeah. We had a public relations problem, and Daddy said, " That's your baby, son."

Eddie Rester 18:50 Go fix it.

Cal Turner Jr. 18:51
Yeah, well, "You can answer their questions. You got through all four years of Vanderbilt. I just got through one. I'm proof that a college dropout is never gonna make it."

Eddie Rester 19:06 Oh, gosh.

Cal Turner Jr. 19:07

And my dad used to say about himself, "I never had an original idea in my life. I just copied what the city boys do." Well, he understood what the city boys were doing better than they did, I think.

Eddie Rester 19:22 Yeah.

Cal Turner Jr. 19:23
And somehow from the country, you can understand the city far better than from the city can

Chris McAlilly 19:34

That's there's a lot of truth in that. So you went from the country to the city to the big city. And so now you're trying to make a case for Wall Street to take seriously this dollar store. So how did you do that? I mean, what was that like? At what point and what years are we talking about here in the journey?

Cal Turner Jr. 19:57

We're talking about December of 1968. That company has been a public company since December of 1968. And there were, we were blessed to go public at that time, because there was less bureaucratic meddling in the affairs of a public company back them. As we got more sophisticated in the United States, we made it a lot more difficult.

Cal Turner Jr. 20:09 A lot more complex.

Cal Turner Jr. 20:46 Yes.

Chris McAlilly 20:46

In a lot of ways, what I hear is the story of from the great, I mean, it's really an American story, in a lot of ways. It's this journey through the Great Depression, through World War Two, and the company grows as the country is really maturing on the other side of World War Two, and you come into leadership at a time when you're making a transition that America is making, in a lot of ways, from an agrarian economy into a more industrialized economy, into retailing.

Eddie Rester 21:18 Into service economy.

Chris McAlilly 21:20

Service economy and the importance of that journey. But it came with a lot of... There are a lot of lessons, there's a lot of hardship in the book, you know, and a lot of a lot of ways in which there's... I like what you said that, "we had to fail our way to the right strategic questions. And you understand the country. there was a lot of pain involved." And I think anybody out there that's running a business, that's trying to scale a business would understand that. I wonder, kind of, if you would highlight a couple of them.

Cal Turner Jr. 21:50
Highlight a couple of what, again?

Chris McAlilly 21:53
The failures or some of the pain that led to the right strategic questions.

Cal Turner Jr. 21:56

Okay. Well, the most difficult decision of my life was one that had to be made by the CEO of the company. When the company was on the verge of chapter 11--we had been very successful. We had over expanded. We'd outgrown ourselves in our ambition, and it was a time where we had to change or we were going to go out of existence. And that had been the plight of a lot of retailers. A lot of retailers have gone out of business. It's a tough, tough business.

Cal Turner Jr. 23:03

Well, what I didn't know, was the real problem of the company. The problem wasn't over expansion. It had just emphasized that the company had no leader. I was the Chief Executive Officer, and my seven-year younger brother, who really wanted to be a lawyer. But my father said, "Oh, no, son, you've got to be productive. You can't be a lawyer." That was actually my dad's response. I don't say that as from me. That was from the real Cal Turner, not from this Cal Turner, Jr. And so Steve came into the business, and it really wasn't what he wanted to do.

Cal Turner Jr. 23:53

Well, sometimes brothers can be very different, very different in every way. How can that be? They have the same DNA. Well, the company had to change. I was responsible for it. And my brother said, "No, I'm not gonna do that." And I had to take a break over the Christmas holiday. And I went skiing. And one night, I read the 15th chapter of John, "I am the vine and my Father is the vinedresser that which is dead he cuts away. That which is fruitful, he prunes for more fruit." And I said, "Thank You, Lord. Thank you. I've got the answer." One brother has to be cut away. The other brother has to be pruned. We're both going to have to go through hell. I don't know which pain hurts more--the cutaway pain or the pruning for more growth. But we each have to go through this.

Cal Turner Jr. 25:06
And then I went back to the business. And my brother and I were suddenly getting along well. All of a sudden everything seemed to be right. And then I read from the, I believe it's the fifth chapter of Second Corinthians or maybe the fourth chapter, though. "Therefore, having this ministry, we do not lose heart." And to me, that was God saying, you know my will. Now get your butt in gear." You know. Now you must do.

Cal Turner Jr. 25:43

And ironically, my brother helped me to fire him. It took eight months for our family to process that decision. And it was hard, hard, hard, hard to do that, because it was going to tear the company apart. It was going to tear the family apart. But finally, my brother said to me, "Look, Cal Jr. As long as I'm here in this company, we're not going to do what you want done with this company. I'm the Chief Operating Officer. So brother, what you're going to have to do is to step up to the plate, deny me my birthright which is this company and fire me." And I pronounce the wedding vow: "I do."

Cal Turner Jr. 26:51

And he said, "Okay, now we have call Mama and Daddy." They were in Florida on vacation. Mama succeeded in getting Daddy out of town for two months, January and February. And this was the end of January. And Daddy said, "I can't believe that I raised two boys who, in a business as large as Dollar General, can't get along." And Mama came to the phone and she said, "I love you both. But if I were there, I'd spank you both."

Eddie Rester 27:25 Oh, gosh.

Chris McAlilly 27:30
The willingness to have to take responsibility for asking that question and responding to it, that was one of the most difficult decisions you had to make.

Cal Turner Jr. 27:40
That was, and I'm indebted to my brother for giving me that last nudge.

Eddie Rester 27:52

I think it highlights for me, so often in work, we know what we need to do. We intuitively know it or we practically know it. We see it in the numbers or we see it in the relationships. But the doing is always the harder step, particularly when it involves someone we've loved or we've worked with a long time, holding people accountable is difficult. I want to get to something at the end of, before you retired. But how did you and your brother's relationship recover? How did that play out?

Cal Turner Jr. 28:27

My brother and I have always had the bonding of love. That is our family dynamic. My mother said we had four happy accidents. And everybody's different from everybody else around here. And yet love, the love that comes from our Lord is the real bonding with others that you need in times of that kind of crisis. And Steve, my brother, and I have a better relationship now than we would have had had he stayed in that business. I don't know how we've ever resolved things. And from the time of his departure from the business, though it didn't happen immediately, the company's growth really, really got going. It really started the success.

Chris McAlilly 29:55
And you also had to ask your father to step away.

Cal Turner Jr. 30:00

Oh that year Chris was was horrible, the year 1988. In January, I fired my brother. In July, unexpectedly, our mother died. She was the glue that held the family together. And then my dad, in his grief at losing his lifelong sweetheart, reemerged into the business and started meddling with the new company I had to put back together. And I had to advise the Board that what my dad said to me, he said, "Son, if you even take that computer proposal to the Board, at the Board meeting, I may resign." So I let the Board know what was about to happen. And the Board said, "Okay. You can't lead this company Cal. We have a fiduciary responsibility to all shareholders. We're here to support your leadership. You've hired new management to support your leadership. And you can't lead here from your office in Nashville when your dad is in his office in Scottsville, interfering and saying no. So we're going to kick him off the Board at the meeting."

Cal Turner Jr. 31:26

I said, "That could kill him." Fired my brother in January, he supported me. Then Mama died in July, and he had to go through that. And now to get kicked off. I said, "That could kill him." And one of them looked at me and he said, "It is time, Cal, for you to put family second." And I was emotionally stunned. I said, "Well, I have to go to Scottsville tomorrow and tell him." "Right," that direct said, and he started writing something on a piece of paper. And I said, "What is that?" He said, "This is your dad's resignation. Get him to sign it."

Cal Turner Jr. 32:23

So I was driven to Scottsville the next day. And I went in to see my dad, and ironically he was sitting at the desk in my brother's office, my brother whom I'd fired in January, my dad was sitting there. And anytime he first saw me, he would light up like a Christmas tree, and he said, "Hi, son," with that big, affirming, loving smile on his face. I couldn't even say hello. I just stuck that piece of paper in front of him, and he read it. And he quickly signed it. And he pitched it at me and had some choice words for the Chief Financial Officer who was taking that proposal to the Board at the meeting, said, "You can tell him where to go."

Cal Turner Jr. 33:37

And I came back and we went through the horrible, horrible board meeting. And I saw my greatest partner in life walk into that meeting looking like a sick puppy. And it was devastating. But that was the beginning of the real success of that company.

Chris McAlilly 34:10
Right. I wonder if you would talk through when you knew it was time to step away?

Cal Turner Jr. 34:19

Well, there was one disagreement my dad and I had had down through the years. My dad made all these great buys. And he'd fib to the computer, about how much he paid for a great deal, knowing that when that was shipped out to the stores, they would create an inventory overage in the warehouse. That's the way the accounting worked. So he was padding the inventory account with his good buys. And I said, "Daddy, our biggest expense in this company is shrinkage and we can't control it if we don't know what it is." He said "Son, in retailing, you're going to be surprised at the end of the year always. And as your father, I'm going to see to it that you have a positive surprise."

Cal Turner Jr. 35:29

And at the end of every year, the auditors would come in and they would say, "Well, Mr. Turner, here's the profit you're gonna show this year." And he'd say, "Oh, we can't show that much profit. Give me the warehouse sheets." And he'd go back through and he'd mark down the cost. "Now, how much profit are we gonna show?" He was cooking the books, out of love for his son. And his understanding of retailing was that this was the way to make a conservative statement. You never declare more profit than you've made. So you prepare the kitty back there, to dig in to as needed.

Cal Turner Jr. 36:21

And then, we had matured beyond that I thought, and at the time of my father's death, which was a devastation to me personally and the company, the accounting problem in the company came to the forefront. And our company went to the Securities and Exchange Commission to report it. And I went through the personal disaster of CEO Inquisition at the Securities and Exchange Commission. I was supposed to be there for one day, and it turned out to be a three- day process of my being in the barrel and the lawyers at the SEC shooting at me. But at the end of the day, they were overruled at the Securities and Exchange Commission, because of their overzealousness.

Cal Turner Jr. 37:39

And I had the negative victory of not being banned by the Securities Exchange Commission to serve on the Board of a public company. They could have. They could have put their stamp of disapproval on me, and I considered it to be a stamp of disapproval on the whole Turner management of the company if it had occurred. But no, they didn't. And then I realized God was saying, "Nevermind all this succession planning that you have orchestrated for years in the company, it's time for you to go. It's time." And I have been released and relieved. And the morning after my retirement as CEO, I was amazed at how fully and deeply I could breathe. The load was gone. The load of responsibility for everybody was gone. And I was reminded of the centurion who said to Christ, just heal my, I believe is my daughter. Just say the word I too am a man under authority. I understood. All you all you need to do is pronounce. We don't have to go. Just say the word. I was under authority. And the growth of the company had increased the weight that I had to carry beyond my understanding of the additional load year over year over year. And God helped me know.

Eddie Rester 39:49

Cal, you and your family created an amazingly successful business that endures even beyond. You've said before you wanted your successors to be successful, and they have. Thank you for sharing with us about the growth of the business. We've got one more chapter to look at. And that's the story of stewardship, philanthropy, and generosity. We're gonna come back in just a few and talk about that. [BREAK]

Chris McAlilly 40:14

[END BREAK] So we're back with Cal Turner. And we've had just wonderful conversation about family and faith and what it was like to be a part of a growing business and moving a family business into an independent company. And we come back for one more conversation about generosity, legacy, philanthropy. I remember you told me a story a few months ago, about a moment when you realize how much money that you were giving every year to the federal government [LAUGHTER] to the federal government, and you had a moment. It was a sea change for you and the way that you began to think about what you were doing with your finances and how you could potentially, you know, begin doing something different, and maybe making a big impact.

Cal Turner Jr. 41:13

Chris, yes, I consider myself an ignoble philanthropist. I got into it for the wrong reason. I was told in late 1980s, or might have been as early as 1990, by tax lawyer, an estate lawyer, "Mr. Turner, if you died today, your estate would owe Uncle Sam $100 million." I didn't tell him my reaction. But my reaction was, "That pisses me off. That's going to do nothing." And my decision was every year, I would have the accountants to tell me how much I could give away that would be tax advantaged. I wanted to give away as much as I could so the government wouldn't receive all of that stuff. And so I that's how I began being philanthropic.

Cal Turner Jr. 42:40

But that's how I became philanthropic. Let me tell you how my dad did. My dad observed that all of his kids, who they now owned half of the business that Luther Turner had given to them, they were all being philanthropic. And he decided, "Okay, I'm gonna do something for philanthropy up here in Scottsville. I'm going to show them that philanthropy in Scottsville, Kentucky is a heck of a lot cheaper than it is in Nashville, Tennessee." And he commissioned a survey, because they didn't have one of how many churches there were in his beloved Allen County, Kentucky. And the number came back, it was either 91 or 95. My sister remembered it to be 95. I remember to be 91. But he gave $1,000 to each church. And for more than half of them, they had received the largest gift in their history. They were overwhelmed. It just came out of the blue.

Cal Turner Jr. 43:58

Now, this is the same man who at the start of my career in the company says, "Son retailing is 24/7. You've got to be in the store all the time. You can't even join the Rotary Club." Well, he he'd been a Rotarian all his life. And he'd also say, "You can't play golf or fish. It's retailing all the time, all the time, all the time." And, and he also said to me once he said, "Son, if you're ever thinking about hiring a golfer, look out. It takes too much time. Son, don't you hire a golfer." And the same thing about a fisherman: "If you ever hire somebody who fishes don't do it. Takes too much time." And "Son, if you ever hire anybody who does both, I will fire you." So here, but now here is that same man, given 91,000 or 95,000, away in Scottsville, Kentucky, and everybody's overwhelmed. And he said, "Look how much cheaper it is up here."

Eddie Rester 45:28 Oh, gosh.

Cal Turner Jr. 45:29

"Look how much cheaper! Look at the bargain philanthropy is up here. You can't buy that kind of goodwill down there when you've moved to Nashville. You can't buy that kind of goodwill down there."

Chris McAlilly 45:42

That's so funny. But also, I think those are those are two distinct ways to get into philanthropy. One would be for the wrong reasons, as you've said, which would be to make sure that the federal government doesn't get it. That's a second way of thinking about it is to buy goodwill in the community. And you can do it a lot cheaper in the county than you can in the city. What would be the right reasons to get into philanthropy?

Cal Turner Jr. 46:09

My father taught me the right reason. About three days before he died, I persuaded him to get in the car with me and drive for one last time over his beloved Allen County, Kentucky. And he was asleep in the passenger's seat in the car. And he suddenly roused and he said, "Turn here." There was a dirt road that I had never noticed. So wheeled in, went around this dirt road. And when we drove about a mile on that crooked road, we came around the curve, and there was a white frame church, a very small church. And he said, "Son, that church." No, here's how he said it. "Son, I have lived in Allen County, Kentucky for more than 75 years. And that church was here before I came. And that church will be here after I'm gone. But while I was here, I had the joy of being part of its ministry." And I said, "Thank You, Lord, for that transformational understanding you gave him as a philanthropist."

Eddie Rester 48:14

I think the word that stands out to me in that conversation with your daddy and your dad teaching you all the way to the end of his life, the word "joy," that it brings joy. And so as you've thought about kind of how and where you want to invest, what are some of the things that bring you joy in your generosity?

Cal Turner Jr. 48:43

The joy of paying back to the Dollar General customers, because the Turner family wealth comes from serving them, and they are salt of the earth people who are struggling to get by. And anything that enhances their life and well-being that I can be part of as a philanthropist, I want to do. And philanthropy has become an agent of family healing in our foundations. We come together and we talk about our values. And we hear from each other about what causes or what or organizations we can most effectively help in their ministry. And it bonds the family. It gives the family meaning. So I recommend the blessing of philanthropy to everyone. And no one should underestimate his opportunity for philanthropy. Giving yourself, doing something. If you're not wealthy, I would say to you, you really are. You have a talent, the sharing of which with someone else can bless your life. Love your neighbor as yourself. And practice that love with philanthropy.

Chris McAlilly 51:13

There's a book that I came across that someone who kind of works in tax and estate law gave me and he said, the book is called "Giving 2.0: Transform Your Giving and Our World." And there's a definition of what it means to be a philanthropist: "a philanthropist is anyone who gives anything--time, money, experience skills and networks--in any amount to create a better world." I think that that's a helpful definition. I appreciate the way in which you then offered a theological frame, that it really is loving your neighbor as yourself. I think that's really helpful. Thanks, Cal.

Eddie Rester 51:55

Just thinking as you're talking about gifts, something someone wise told me a long time ago, "if you wait until you think you can give, then you'll never give." And I think that for me, that's you wait until you think you can give, then you'll never give." And I think that for me, that's always been a guiding principle. If you wait until you think you have enough or it's comfortable, or you have enough time or have enough money, there will never be enough time and there will never be enough money. One of the threads in all of our conversations has been the thread of faith. How has your faith played into an understanding of the generous life?

Cal Turner Jr. 52:37

Well, I'm, to use my terminology, I'm a practicing backsliding Methodist. And when I was promoting the book, and I was in Dallas, I was, for the first time, asked the question by an impressive young lady who was in the family of the company that had started this Christian Network, she said, "Mr. Turner, I heard you..." [ASIDE] in makeup, when your head's bald, you've got to keep it from shining too much in the camera. [END ASIDE] She said, "I heard you call yourself a backslider. What is a backslider?" And I thought, "Oh, I wonder how I'll answer this." I said, "A backslider is someone whose standard is Jesus Christ. And that person acknowledges that relative to that standard, he is a backslider or she is a backslider. But the acknowledgment of that backslide empowers him or her to connect with other backsliders so that we can help each other to do less of it." You get a connection with others that is synergistic when you acknowledge your backslidingness.

Eddie Rester 54:37
Your need. Your need for grace. Your need for that.

Cal Turner Jr. 54:41 Amen. Amen.

Eddie Rester 54:42 That comes from Christ.

Chris McAlilly 54:43

So I want to come back to faith, but I want to go, before we push, I guess, forward to faith or back I don't know which direction. We want to circle back around. One of the things you said that philanthropy has been an agent of family healing as you think about how best and most effectively to make an impact on what the family deems is priority. And I wonder how you determine effectiveness, because I think that's something that as folks think about philanthropy in the way it's changed, the question of, you know, bringing to bear business metrics or other kinds of metrics that would allow you to know actually, "Yes, we're performing well here or not in our philanthropy," how do you think through those kinds of questions? And how maybe has that change for you through time?

Cal Turner Jr. 54:43 Amen.

Cal Turner Jr. 55:37

My mentor was a Methodist. He was the chairman of the American Management Association, Larry Haveley. And he said, "There is one way to determine whether any dynamic on Earth is good or bad." He said, "You have to realize that God's most precious asset on Earth is human potential. Anything that enhances, empowers, or builds human potential is good. Anything that detracts is bad. That is the test. The global test of the efficacy of anything on earth."

Chris McAlilly 56:47
Yeah, fair enough. That sounds great. That's a good answer.

Cal Turner Jr. 56:52
It's a good answer, because it's not mine. My stuff comes from somebody else.

Eddie Rester 56:58

So thinking of that, ... it sounds like you're wanting to make sure that what you do, as you've determined giving has been how do we enhance and not detract. And so I know that y'all have given a lot in terms of leadership development along the way. You've given a lot to communities along the way that has enhanced and that begins to make sense for me now in thinking some of that through. And you talked about the healing nature of it. I haven't really thought about that, how healing it is within families and bonding it is within family, and you would think that it would be well, it's the business side that bonds us and heals us. But I think I've seen in a lot of family businesses, you know, that it's the business side that kind of creates the angst and the frustration and the bitterness and the hurt feelings. And so did someone encourage that? Or is that just something that y'all discovered as y'all began to work together?

Chris McAlilly 56:58 There you go.

Cal Turner Jr. 58:04

I think the love grounding of our family upbringing positioned us to learn those godly lessons, because God is love. And in my leadership discussion in the company, I described my highest value as reconciling love. And I said before you can write a personal mission statement, you have to realize that hard decision making in life is never white versus black. It's usually gray versus gray. There are good values on this side, in competition with good values on that side of a decision. What is your number one value that will always win? What is your number one value? You've got to figure out your number one value before you can write your statement of personal mission.

Cal Turner Jr. 59:44

My number one value is reconciling love. It is the love that seeks first to be positive, to be affirming, to be nurturing, empowering, encouraging. But it's also the love that has the guts to step up to the plate where the negative must be employed, where a discipline must be empowered or practiced. It's the love that has the courage that, for example, our Lord showed in the money changers in the temple. That was holy, loving anger.

Eddie Rester 1:00:41 Right. Yeah.

Chris McAlilly 1:00:44
Another question for you, that comes to mind to ask, I mean, this has been a... When did you step out of the company? What year was that?

Cal Turner Jr. 1:00:53 Well, I think it was 2003.

Chris McAlilly 1:01:00 Right.

Cal Turner Jr. 1:01:00 I believe there abouts.

Chris McAlilly 1:01:02

Right. So your journey with with philanthropy, I mean, it goes back before that. But certainly over the last three decades, it's something that's been a focus of yours. I wonder what you've seen in your own philanthropy and then in the broader conversation that has changed through that time, through those three decades.

Cal Turner Jr. 1:01:21

Chris McAlilly 1:01:24
For yourself in the things that you all have done, and maybe what you see more broadly.

Cal Turner Jr. 1:01:32
The opportunity to share life's lessons learned is probably the greatest philanthropy, and I applaud what you're doing here. And I'm happy to be part of your philanthropy right here.

Eddie Rester 1:02:05

I think as we've looked over the last couple of decades, one of the things that I've seen is that people have a lot more opportunities in ways they can give. A lot more organizations out there. There are a lot of nonprofits that are started all the time. You know, now, most universities have really high-powered organized foundations. So I think one of the changes that I've seen is there are just a lot of ways, places that compete for our generosity. How do y'all begin... What are some--you talked about your primary value that reconciling love--are there other values that lead y'all?You've talked about, you know, enabling humans. Other things that guide y'all in terms of how you determine how when and where you'll strive to make an impact?

Cal Turner Jr. 1:03:08

Well it's hard to describe, Eddie, in the Turner family, because of the way the wealth was distributed equally. The foundations that have come from that are unique to that family group. And some have pursued the arts. Some have have pursued the Dollar General thoughts that I shared with you of serving. I don't like to use the term "the poor" but serving struggling people. Music has been important to me, and it was a joy for my brother and sister and me to establish the Laura Turner Performance Hall at the Schermerhorn Center in Nashville, Tennessee, for the ministry of music to all.

Cal Turner Jr. 1:04:55

The opportunity for ministry is broad and deep. There are many facets to it. And each person has his opportunity or her opportunity to pursue life ministry that is right for him or her. And that is between that person and your Creator, God Almighty. It's up to you. And no one else can tell you what to do with that.

Chris McAlilly 1:05:43

You've talked in previous conversations about how you try to put your your life, your faith, your family, your business, your philanthropy under the authority of Christ. And I wonder if you could just talk about that, kind of how that's been important to you. As we come to a close here, What has changed in philanthropy? circle back around to Jesus--seems like always a good preacher thing to do, but I know it's not just a preacher thing to do where you're concerned?

Cal Turner Jr. 1:06:12

Well, I hope I don't circle back to Jesus. I hope with His love and empowering help to this backslider, I stay in that. And, Chris, that means something different for me every day of my life, because I remind myself, when I get out of bed, I'm a different person than that man who got out of bed the day before. Today is different. This is the day the Lord has made. Let me rejoice and be glad in it and seek what I should do. And remember the three-word mission statement of that Dollar General person who came into the training class and wrote a personal mission statement: "Under our encouragement, Mr. Turner, you say that a mission statement has to be inspiring, impossible, and brief. It has to be brief, so you can remember it. It has to be inspiring so that it motivates you every day of your life. Impossible, because if it has a goal that is attainable, it's not a mission, because you'll do it and then you're finished. No. It's got to be impossible. But it's got to motivate you every day of your life. I have a brief one, Mr. Turner. Three words: God honoring change. Every day when I get up, I intend to be excited about that day's opportunity with whatever person I encounter with whatever circumstance I'm engaged to be part of the change that honors God." And I thought, "Wow." Now my paragraph of a mission statement has become three words thanks to him.

Chris McAlilly 1:08:53

Three words that I think sum up the whole conversation, God honoring change. Thank you, Cal, for your time. Thank you for offering who you are and your story and your faith with us. It means a great deal. Thank you. Thank you so much.

Eddie Rester 1:09:11
Thank you for all the time you've given us. It's been a great gift. Thank you.

Cal Turner Jr. 1:09:16
And your gift to me of this opportunity is your philanthropy. May God be with you always as you pursue that.

Eddie Rester 1:09:31
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Chris McAlilly 1:09:37
If you would like to support this work financially or if you have an idea for a future guest, you can go to theweightpodcast.com. [END OUTRO]