6 Tires, No Plan : The Impossible Journey of the Most Inspirational Leader That (Almost) Nobody Knows (9781608322589)

by Rosenbaum, Michael

  “He told us about this huge project to restore the Pauline Chapel, which is the Pope’s private chapel, and he said the people who help restore it will get to use the Pauline Chapel for every wedding or baptism for the rest of their lives or the lives of their family. It goes on in perpetuity and, interestingly enough, we would be knighted into the highest order that the Vatican can give a layperson. We’re standing there and having a couple of scotches and a bottle of wine, and we’re thinking this is really cool. This is something that we should look into and, before you know it, we said, ‘Let’s do it.’”

  When the time came to visit the Vatican in 2006, the Halles chartered a plane to bring forty couples with them for a week of festivities, touring and the knighting ceremony itself. The entourage included family, friends and employees, almost all of whom had known Bruce or Diane for decades.

  Larry Allen, regional vice president in Houston, says he and Halle were having dinner after checking out sites for new stores when Bruce “suddenly leaned over and said, ‘I want you to go to Rome with us in October. We’ll be going to the Vatican.’”

  The week in Rome was like an extended company party, as well as a vacation, with dinners, receptions and tours available to all the guests. Bruce and Diane arranged buses to take their guests to the ceremony and other programs over several days.

  The Pauline Chapel was still being renovated at the time of the ceremony, but the group was given a brief tour. The next day, at the front of St. Peter’s Basilica, Pope Benedict XVI addressed the throngs who had assembled and came down to greet a number of visitors, including the Halles.

  “How do you stand at the Vatican and know that you are receiving the highest lay order of your religion? You almost cannot grasp it,” Diane says. “It’s an awesome thing. I had said to Bruce the previous year, ‘Two things I’d like to do before I die. I’d like to go to the White House and I’d like to meet the Pope,’ and within that year, we had gone to the White House and we had met the Pope. How does that happen?”

  While the couple began to fuse their approaches to charitable giving and philanthropy, Diane looked for additional ways to create a life that would be uniquely theirs. Art seemed to be a natural fit, considering Diane’s history with art collections and the Phoenix Art Museum. However, Bruce and Gerry had traveled this road, at least partially, during their marriage.

  Since early in their marriage, Gerry had foraged for tire memorabilia in antique shops and gift stores, seeking out tire-themed ashtrays and other knickknacks. In 1982, she found a lithograph she thought Bruce might like, an old Pirelli Tire poster. That single gift created the impetus for a decades-long search for other tire posters. Ultimately, the Halle collection would grow to nearly 340 posters and would represent a unique perspective on both advertising and the tire industry.

  Bruce’s interest in tire posters grew organically, not by plan, much like his love of opera and fine wine. Knowing that Gerry was a fan of opera and loved to listen to records at home, Bruce bought her tickets to a live performance, where he became enamored of the spectacle and the art. Responding to an ad from the J.L. Hudson department store in Detroit, where Gerry worked while he was in college, Halle started buying and, later, collecting fine wines. As with the growth of Discount Tire itself, Halle’s passions grew more from circumstance than plan.

  Now married to the former president of the Phoenix Art Museum, Bruce Halle was about to embark on another journey of discovery. Not surprisingly, Diane came up with a plan.

  “Gerry got me started with posters, and Diane got me into art,” Halle says simply.

  Diane Halle had no formal training in art history, but she had built her passion for the subject through her involvement with the Cummings family and the Phoenix Art Museum. As a volunteer at the museum, she stopped giving tours and began working in the library as a means to absorb more about her chosen avocation.

  Looking for a niche in a well-established profession, Diane began to focus on Latin American art, making a few investments in selected pieces early in her years with Bruce.

  “We’re in the state of Arizona and, at that time, they said one quarter of the population in a couple of years is going to be Hispanic,” she recalls. “I thought Latin American art was the natural progression. It was the time. I was in the right state. So I began.”

  Diane saw the project on several levels. On the surface, Latin American art represented a largely undiscovered niche. More significant, the journey would be an experience she and Bruce, both well established as adults, could create together. Bruce was game, as he is for most new adventures.

  “He’s a sponge. He absorbs everything. He’s interested to know about things that he’s not even interested in,” Diane says happily. Diane was interested in Latin American art, so Bruce was interested, too.

  Enlisting the guidance of art experts Roland Augustine and Beverly Adams, the newlyweds traveled to Argentina, Brazil, Peru and Ecuador, as well as art festivals and galleries around the world. As was the case with charity, each approached their journey from a slightly different perspective. While Diane began to develop the context for their collection, Bruce tended to focus on individual pieces and, often, the backstory of the artist.

  One of the first pieces Diane wanted to buy was a ten-foot square painting with a grid and polka dots on bright orange paper, a painting titled Rafter: Hell Act II by Cuban émigré Luis Cruz Azaceta. Toward one corner of the canvas, Azaceta is adrift on a raft, hemmed in by the grid in a sea of orange.

  “Not in my house,” Bruce declared.

  Diane bought the painting and it did, in fact, hang in their house. The next time Azaceta was in Phoenix, Diane arranged a dinner with him at the Halle home and seated him next to Bruce. Bruce and the artist discussed the artist’s life in Cuba, his escape from that island nation and his sense of estrangement from his native land.

  By the end of the evening, Bruce liked the painter, which made him like the painting of a little man trapped in a sea of orange.

  “Every day, I check his progress,” he says now.

  The Halles developed a simple system for their collection. If both of them like a piece, it hangs in their home in Paradise Valley. If he doesn’t like the piece and Diane finds it worth having, it’s displayed elsewhere. While Diane sees the Latin American art collection as a legacy to be built and passed on, Bruce is more of the “I know what I like” persuasion.

  “I’m buying sculptures, and I only buy things that appeal to me, that I like to look at,” Bruce says. “I’m not going to buy it because the artist is famous or popular. I don’t care about that. I care about what I look at.”

  As Diane worked to create a shared journey into philanthropy and art, Bruce introduced her to a way of life and thinking that she had not fully appreciated before meeting him. Most important was his focus on the importance of the individual, a focus that had enabled him to attract and retain loyal followers for more than thirty-five years.

  “I have learned to care much more about people who work for me. They have become my family,” she says. “They do things for me that are above and beyond the call of duty, and for that I will be forever grateful, and I will show them. That’s what Bruce has taught me: how to treat people.

  “I’ve also learned from Bruce not to worry so much. Don’t be so nervous about the next moment. Live and enjoy it. And, live life to its fullest. Don’t try to micromanage everything. Relax.”

  Diane begins speaking faster about lessons learned.

  “I have a problem and I figure out the solution. I’m set. I know it from beginning to end,” she relates. “So I explain it to Bruce, ‘This is how I’m going to do it.’ Then he looks at me and says, ‘So, are you asking me my opinion?’ ‘Yes, I’d like to hear what you have to say.’ He’ll take it and make just like two little moves and it’s done. He figures out instantly how to put the pieces of the puzzle together in the fewest steps. It’s amazing, even if it is pretty annoying at the same time.”

  F
ather Ray says the couple benefits from two very different ways of thinking and problem solving. “They have different qualities,” he says. “In some ways, I see Bruce as more inductive, very experiential, moving toward the center, and I see Diane as more deductive, applying experiences to long-held principles.”

  Lattie Coor, founder of the Center for the Future of Arizona and a longtime friend, says both Bruce and Diane changed as they began to build a life together.

  “To watch the two of them both grow, and genuinely grow, it’s particularly instructive,” Coor says. “Bruce Halle hasn’t lost an iota of who he is as he’s grown into this. He never forgets where he came from, he never forgets who he is, but he’s not locked into his world.”

  PAYING FORWARD

  “Take all the guys in your stores, the total number you have, and multiply it by maybe five or six, whatever you want, some number like that, because their families are your responsibility, too,” Bruce Halle tells his regional vice presidents on a planning retreat. “As you move up in this company, you just get more and more responsibility, more people depending on you and what you do. It will keep you up at night thinking about it a little bit.”

  To a great extent, Bruce Halle’s family had survived the Depression and the war years because somebody decided his family was their responsibility, too. In most cases, it was the McKelveys, who provided a home in Berlin, a job in Detroit and the ability to buy a home in Taylor Township. Bruce had benefited, individually, from the daily rides provided by Carl Hansen, the confidence of Sister Marie Ellen, the generosity of Ray Walk’s loan for his wedding with Gerry and other uncounted kindnesses.

  The lesson was clear: good people help others, and those who are helped must pass it on. By the time Bruce Halle graduated from high school, he had developed a focus on taking care of others, from his mother and siblings to the friends he helped to find summer jobs. In college, he scavenged for leftovers at his job in the cafeteria, sharing with fellow students. As a Marine, esprit de corps was drilled into him from day one. As a father and husband, his responsibility to family was irrevocable.

  Although Bruce Halle had no leadership role as he left college, his style of servant leadership was already embedded in his DNA. As a company owner, he would see his employees as extended family to be protected. In turn, he would expect those he protected to look out for others.

  The mandate to pay it forward is absolute in Halle’s mind. Steve Fournier, chief operating officer, remembers the emphatic message he received from Halle when he moved into the corporate office.

  “When I was promoted out of the stores, he said to me, ‘I bet you’re feeling pretty good about yourself, and you’ll be going around to all the stores, telling your managers what to do. But just remember that you work for them,’” Fournier says.

  Rich Kuipers, senior vice president, says responsibility to others has been etched into the souls of everyone who survives at Discount Tire, while self-importance can be hazardous to one’s career.

  “Nobody works for you. We work with people,” Kuipers says. “The quickest way to get hammered around here is to think it’s about you and not the people you work with.”

  Halle has no patience for people who achieve success and consider their good fortune to be a reward uniquely deserved. Nobody arrives at his destination without the support of others, no matter what their self-made saga might suggest, and the greatest sin is failing to recognize, acknowledge and repay the favors.

  Halle often tells people that he stopped working for money many years ago. As a practical matter, the founder of Discount Tire has more than enough wealth to last several lifetimes. Now, he says, the reason for working is to create new opportunities for the people who are coming up the ranks today.

  “All we’re doing is creating opportunity and jobs for a lot of wonderful people, just like that was created for you by somebody else,” Halle reminds his executives. Halle sees kindness less as something received than as a trust to be passed on to the next person in line. The more kindnesses one receives, the greater the responsibility to pay it forward. As Halle considers the people who run the company today, he looks for that same commitment.

  Paul Witherspoon, vice president in Utah, remembers that, “We were traveling on his plane and he said, ‘You’re responsible for people who aren’t even born yet. You’re responsible for the kids of employees that haven’t been born yet. If we don’t create the opportunities for them, we haven’t done our job.’ And I realized how that applied to me in terms of the opportunity here today for my kids.”

  Ray Winiecke, vice president of the San Diego region, echoes the belief that the work isn’t done until everyone gets to share in the success that Halle created for the current managers.

  “It’s one thing to say it, but another to actually live it and see it and do it,” Winiecke says. “We have the responsibility to make sure the opportunity is available to all our people. We can’t bring them in under false pretenses. We can’t say there’s an opportunity when there isn’t. We have to create the opportunity for them like it was offered to us. Our dreams have been realized, but that’s not the case yet for everyone around us, so we have to make sure they have the opportunity we had.”

  The mission to take care of employees includes assistance when families face important challenges. Across the country, employees raise money and make contributions to the Employee Assistance Fund, which provides extra support for families with a sick child or other serious need. While Halle has the capacity to provide that support from his own resources, he sees it as critical for employees to work together to support each other, much as his own extended family did in Berlin and, to a lesser extent, Detroit.

  Halle is fond of relating stories about Discount Tire employees who internalized the message about paying forward to others. After sending one employee a check to replace items lost in a fire, Halle received a call from the employee, who said he didn’t need all that money but wanted to share it with a neighbor. Halle sent another employee a check for $20,000 to cover medical expenses for the employee’s wife, only to receive a refund of the funds he didn’t need. Halle remembers dozens of cases of employees winning prizes and giving the money back or sharing it with their workers, and he wants to be sure his executives remember those stories as well.

  “I call all employees on their birthdays, which is just a minute but it means a lot,” says Todd Richard, Los Angeles vice president. “I used to work for [Houston VP] Larry Allen and he called me on my birthday and it made a difference to me, so I’m doing it now for my employees. We have thirty stores in Los Angeles. Paying it forward now means I have to build as many stores as I can before I retire. I pay it forward by building stores to give my people an opportunity to become store managers and help them become better businessmen, better fathers to their families.”

  The people who make the connection regarding support for employees also have the mind-set to do the same for the customer. Buying into the “be the dad” culture at Discount Tire almost always entails a recognition of the debt owed to the people who pay the bills.

  “We are in the people business, and we just happen to be selling tires,” Mark MacGuinness, vice president of Discount Tire Direct, says. “We haven’t just adopted this idea as a catchphrase or as part of our vision statement. We live this way. We are truly interested in the happiness of our customers and our people. I train my new hires to take action if they ever meet an unhappy customer. Not just to empathize, but to take action.”

  Tom Williams, vice president in the Carolinas region, says the relationship of each employee with every individual customer is a direct link to the beginnings of the company, when Halle was opening his first store and greeting his first customer.

  “I tell them, ‘You are the Mr. Halle of your store and, if you can envision back in those days, it was a matter of survival for him, feeling deep gratitude that they had chosen to buy from him.’ We need to treat every customer who comes in our stores today the same way, em
brace them as if it was our first customer on our first day.”

  Richard says the company’s practice of giving tires to out-of-luck customers connects each store with the Halle dogma about paying forward. Just as Halle provides benefits or financial support to employees when they are in need, the managers in the stores are called upon to take care of their customers in need.

  Greg Smith, vice president in Florida, says the company’s practice of giving free tires to poor customers or those whose warranties don’t quite cover their specific loss is the most visible example of paying forward to customers.

  “It’s all about earning the referral, about the word of mouth, and if you have to give away a tire to keep a customer happy, it will come back to you tenfold,” Smith says. “We probably give away a tire a week at each store in Florida. A single mom comes in with three screaming kids, four bald tires—one is shot—and it’s another week until payday. So we’ll loan her a set of tires or just give it to her.”

  Paying forward is part of the DNA of the people who succeed at Discount Tire, internalized through either genetics or osmosis. Halle is not so much a mentor to his team as he is the prototype to be emulated. Like almost all entrepreneurs, he has a vision to be followed and he is determined to perpetuate that vision throughout the organization.

  In his vision, success comes from focusing on what each person owes to his family, to future employees and to the next customer coming in the door. Everyone has an unbreakable contract to pay forward to the next customer, the next employee and the next generation.

  It’s a simple idea that has driven growth for more than five decades. And Bruce Halle wants to be sure nobody forgets the mission.

  PERFECTING THE SYSTEM

  “If you go out and spend an extra million dollars on something, how many tires do the guys in the stores have to sell to pay for that?” Bruce Halle asks. “What we have to do is fight bureaucracy, fight it, because it’s like a disease that creeps in all by itself.”