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Copyright © 2012 Michael Rosenbaum
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This story was already written when I arrived for my first meeting at Discount Tire Company. It was drafted by Bruce Halle and thousands of people who have signed on to fulfill both his life mission and their own. Truly, I am just the guy who typed it up.
I was introduced to the Bruce Halle story by Marilyn Seymann, Ph.D., who is CEO of the Bruce T. Halle Family Foundation and the kind of friend one should hope to find once in a lifetime. When Marilyn suggested this project, I was hesitant. After publication of my fourth book, I was taking some time off from writing. A biography of a tire retailer didn’t seem to be the project that would lure me back to writing books.
“Wait until you meet Bruce. You’ll feel differently,” Marilyn said. As always, she was right.
I am grateful to Marilyn for that introduction and for the access that both Bruce and his wife, Diane, offered in the development of this project. Their willingness to discuss situations candidly and address challenges honestly has improved the reporting in this text.
Similarly, I am most appreciative of the openness provided by dozens of employees who agreed to speak candidly and, usually, on the record about their boss. It’s always a tightrope act to speak publicly about the guy who signs your paycheck, which makes the staff contribution to my research even more valuable.
Special thanks must go to Marlene Ambrose, Bruce Halle’s executive assistant, whose consistent cooperation and coordination efforts made this project much more productive, and to Carol Woyak, administrative assistant to Diane Halle, for her invaluable support.
Thanks, as well, to Gary Van Brunt, vice chairman; Tom Englert, chief executive officer; and Steve Fournier, chief operating officer, for repeated reviews of history and operating philosophy. Lori Governale, vice president of administration; Andrew Haus, assistant treasurer; and Stacy Adams, assistant vice president of human resources/payroll, all provided invaluable support in helping me sort out dates and facts about the company. Mike Schwerd, senior advertising analyst, was irreplaceable as a guide to the company’s photo archives.
Thanks to Odette Leclerc, curator at the Berlin and Coos County Historical Society, for research into the early life of Bruce Halle and his family in Berlin, New Hampshire.
Thanks to Marcee Williams and my wife, Jill, for countless hours of transcription and proofreading, along with the team at Greenleaf Book Group for shepherding this project to completion.
Finally, a great thank-you to the guys in the stores, both full-time and part-time, who shared their stories and dreams with me. You have inspired me and I wish you the greatest of success. After meeting so many of you, I know you will achieve it.
—MICHAEL ROSENBAUM
CONTENTS
FOREWORD
INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER 1: The Back of the Store
CHAPTER 2: A Normal Childhood
CHAPTER 3: Brave New World
CHAPTER 4: The Polished People
CHAPTER 5: The Speech
CHAPTER 6: A Few Good Men
CHAPTER 7: Coming of Age
CHAPTER 8: False Starts
CHAPTER 9: Six Tires, No Plan
CHAPTER 10: ’Til Death Do Us Part
CHAPTER 11: Arizona Invasion
CHAPTER 12: Going for Broke
CHAPTER 13: The Lost Boys
CHAPTER 14: Reversal of Fortune
CHAPTER 15: Reset Button
Photo Insert
CHAPTER 16: The Whirlwind
CHAPTER 17: The World According to Bruce
CHAPTER 18: I’m Checking His Progress
CHAPTER 19: Paying Forward
CHAPTER 20: Perfecting the System
CHAPTER 21: The Bumblebee
CHAPTER 22: Woodstock for Tire Jockeys
CHAPTER 23: I’m Going to Build You a House
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
FOREWORD
In 1960, two years before Sam Walton opened his first Walmart store in Rogers, Arkansas, Bruce Halle rented an empty shop in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and founded Discount Tire Company. Half a century later, both companies are industry leaders with strong cultural drivers. While Halle’s story is less studied than Walton’s, the growth of Discount Tire offers significant insights into the creation of a sustainable, productive business.
Both founders began with a commitment to lower prices than those offered by other retailers. Both went further, however, by focusing on the customer’s experience as a way to build repeat sales and referrals. Although both would sell products that consumers could buy elsewhere, each man found a way to differentiate his business, creating favorable relationships with customers and strong brand value.
Brand value, of course, is the whole that exceeds the sum of its parts. Brand value offers a competitive advantage that can be measured in customer loyalty, marketing effectiveness, cost of capital, or all of the above.
Given the importance of this advantage, business schools and students invest substantial energy in the study of brands. Often, the corporations studied are mature, with established strategies and mission statements. In many cases, it would serve these scholars well to start at the beginning, at the founding of the companies they study.
When an entrepreneur opens a business, the essence of its brand is established before the first sale. Entrepreneurs imbue their creations with passions and values that translate into corporate brands. Like Sam Walton and most other business founders, Bruce Halle did not bring a detailed business plan to the tire store he opened in 1960. He did, however, bring a set of values to drive his decisions.
At the most basic level, Halle wanted to put food on the table. His first goals were primal: food, clothing and shelter. Somewhat more sophisticated were the values he applied to achieve these goals. Halle was willing to accept a discounter’s margins, but wanted to earn loyalty and referrals in return. He was willing to work hard, but wanted to have fun while doing it. He wanted to be in charge, but knew he couldn’t become truly successful without the support of a team.
Notably, like Walton, Halle didn’t begin with a spreadsheet of financial projections, but focused instead on the value to be delivered to the customer. For the entrepreneur, strategic plans and vision statements are seldom a priority. The founder’s life is focused on the next customer, the next sale, the next bill to be paid, and the personal approach to life that translates into business practice.
As the entrepreneur establishes a business, the corporate brand is a personal brand, reflecting the specific relationships created by the founder with customers, suppliers and other stakeholders. The brand is idiosyncratic, tied to the individual entrepreneur’s passions and va
lues. In fact, the founder is the brand. If his or her values are constructive and the founder is consistent in delivering on them, the company will grow.
To accelerate and sustain that growth, the founder must propagate the personal brand across a larger base of customers. The founder must enlist likeminded employees—true believers—to both adopt and fulfill the mission. Employees must be convinced, not compelled, to sign on to the founder’s vision and values, to operate in a way that resembles or replicates the founder’s style. Employees must become missionaries for the personal brand of the founder.
In the broadest sense, the brand represents the overall reputation and identity of the company among all stakeholder groups. More important, the brand reflects specific relationships of individual employees and customers. Whether the employee is a Discount Tire store manager or a Walmart greeter, local representatives of the founder’s values will drive sustainable success.
As a company grows, the founder’s values may be codified into a mission statement that is transmitted and translated for newer members of the team. When the mission remains clear and the values are shared consistently, the company has the greatest opportunity to build and reinforce its brand.
Notably, values include attributes that are not tied immediately to product delivery. In the case of Discount Tire, Halle emphasizes the importance of paying forward, creating opportunity for the next employee. The type of person who will respond to Halle’s passion is also likely to believe strongly in the team, the community, the company and its customers. As they mirror the founder’s values and pay forward to stakeholders, they become missionaries for the brand and build the company.
Is it possible to overemphasize the connection between the values of the founder and the long-term sustainability of a corporation? Certainly, the linkage might become less obvious over time, but it would be a mistake to presume that the link can be broken without a negative impact. If the founder’s values are both productive and consistently applied, they will drive growth. As employees adopt those values, the corporate culture evolves to accelerate and sustain growth over the long term.
This is demonstrably the case for Discount Tire. The culture of customer service, of paying forward, of supporting fellow employees, is clearly a continuation of Bruce Halle’s value system. As a driver of sustained growth and financial strength, the value of this culture is indisputable.
Creating and maintaining a cohesive, productive business approach is a challenge for all companies. Few will succeed at this exercise for more than a handful of years. Even rarer, of course, are companies like Discount Tire, or Walmart, that can thrive after more than half a century.
When one encounters a large organization with a committed team of brand champions, it’s instinctive to look for the sophisticated strategy behind the culture. It’s often more instructive, however, to look to the company’s founding, and its founder. In many cases, possibly most, the seeds were present at the beginning.
S. Robson Walton
Chairman of the Board
Wal-mart Stores, Inc.
INTRODUCTION
More than six miles above the Gulf Coast, Bruce Halle is saying grace.
It is a moment that will pass unnoticed by his colleagues at Discount Tire Company. Halle’s lunch is laid out in front of him, his head is bowed and he is speaking softly. But he has not announced to the passengers on his jet that this is the time for everyone to say grace. Each person has his meal and each is free to do, or not do, as his individual practice directs.
It’s a Bruce Halle moment. This is his jet, these are his employees and this is Halle’s food that everyone is about to consume. For many corporate chieftains, this also would be the moment to insist that each employee follow the leader. Halle passes up the opportunity, following his own compass without demanding that others mimic his behavior.
Often, in the process of identifying the secrets to Halle’s success, it’s important to focus on the things that don’t happen. Halle doesn’t insist on being the center of every discussion, he doesn’t discuss his possessions as if they were trophies on a wall, and you can talk to him for days on end without ever, ever having a conversation about tires.
Truth be told, Bruce Halle does not love tires. He doesn’t love tire stores, either, even though he has amassed an empire of more than eight hundred retail tire stores over the five decades since his founding of Discount Tire Company.
What Halle does love is paying forward, creating the opportunity for the next guy who is willing to work hard to build a life and pay forward to the guy after that. He loves to see his own success reflected—and created—through the success of other people.
This is the story of an everyday hero, a very ordinary guy who overcame obstacles to lead a very extraordinary life. It’s the story of an average Joe who makes it possible for thousands of other average Joes to become everyday heroes in their own right.
At first, people might question the idea that anything can be “everyday” about Bruce Halle and his life. The man is a billionaire, after all, the owner of a multibillion-dollar company and a legend in his industry. He goes where he wants when he wants, and when he arrives, the door is always open.
Money is the root of misperceptions, though, the Rorschach test of our own values. Many people will ascribe superior taste and judgment to the most basic acts of the wealthy. Others will dismiss any kindness as meaningless, arguing that they can afford it.
In that regard, money is also the great unequalizer, casting the actions and lives of the wealthy in a different hue than those of people with more limited resources. Remove the camouflage of wealth, though, and it is easier to see the man behind the means.
Bruce Halle was a poor kid and a poorer student, lacking focus, bedeviled by an unpredictable temper, often the loser in his battles of conscience, unsure of where or how he would find any direction in life.
In the ironic alchemy that creates everyday heroes, he was the perfect candidate.
Over the course of a lifetime, Halle has created a legacy not by building on innate gifts but by finding a way to get past his own limitations and find a new spark for good. He made as many mistakes as anyone else along the way, but he did two things that most people fail to do: he learned from his mistakes and he made it a practice to blame nobody but himself when things went awry.
That’s the thing about everyday heroes. They aren’t born to greatness or with superhuman powers. Trace the history of almost all of them and they will have seemed to have, more or less, the same capability and the same potential as any other person on the block. The people who make the leap are those who do more, who go beyond, who make the extra effort. Beyond the celebrity buzz, we admire people most when they walk the walk.
Bruce Halle walks the walk. His greatest achievement isn’t tied to the wealth he’s accumulated or the number of tires he’s sold. What makes Halle special is his consistent, disciplined application of Golden Rule basics to create opportunity for thousands of ordinary guys who want to do more, go beyond and make the extra effort—even if they don’t realize it at the time they join his company.
For many business leaders, success flows from the income statement, from market share and accumulation of personal wealth. For Halle, success is measured by the legions of tire changers who strive to model their careers, and their lives, after the guy who gave them their first real opportunity to succeed.
Since starting Discount Tire more than five decades ago, Halle has consistently paid forward to a new generation of ordinary Joes and motivated them to pay forward, as well. As they do so, they follow the path of the debt-ridden Marine who set the wheels in motion in an old plumbing supply store in Ann Arbor, more than fifty years ago.
This is the story of a very ordinary guy who has established a very extraordinary legacy.
THE BACK OF THE STORE
Bruce Halle is smiling as he climbs out of the minivan and surveys the Discount Tire store on Beach Boulevard. It’s a beautiful spri
ng day in Jacksonville, Florida, sunny and not too humid. In the bays, tire jockeys are working on a handful of cars. Out in the parking lot, the store’s owner, James Turnage, is waiting to greet Halle and his team.
Technically, Turnage doesn’t own the store. Every tire and wheel, the equipment and signage, the building itself and the land beneath all belong to Bruce T. Halle, founder and sole shareholder of Discount Tire Company. FLJ05—the fifth store opened in Jacksonville, Florida—is one of more than eight hundred stores in the retail empire Halle started in an old plumbing supply building in Ann Arbor, Michigan, more than fifty years ago.
In a very real sense, though, FLJ05 doesn’t belong to Halle. Although he does own the physical property, Turnage owns the keys.
Discount Tire Company has no franchises and no equity investors other than Bruce Thomas Halle, but Halle wants Turnage and every other employee to think of the store as his own—and treat both employees and customers accordingly. While Turnage doesn’t own title to the store, he does earn the same kind of returns any minority partner might. In addition to a base salary, he and Halle share in the earnings of the store: Turnage gets 10 percent of the first $200,000 in earnings and 20 percent of every dollar of earnings above that level. As would be the case with any other owner, there’s no cap to his earnings potential. The model at Discount Tire is different from the many retailers that set a salary for store managers and then offer a potential bonus of, perhaps, 10 to 30 percent. Because 80 to 90 percent of store earnings flow back to the company, Halle sees no reason to limit the potential earnings of his managers.
This model has fulfilled a dream for thousands of blue-collar guys and they, in turn, have brought Discount Tire to the top spot among independent tire retailers. Discount Tire stores operate in twenty-three states from Florida to Washington, with many of its West Coast outlets operating as America’s Tire stores. (The company opened store &800, an America’s Tire shop in Rocklin, California, in May 2011.) The company expands its reach with its online Discount Tire Direct, which ships tires and wheels across the country. With stores in fewer than half of the states, Discount Tire captured an estimated 9 percent of the replacement tire market in 2010, posting more than $3 billion of revenues.
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