Founders
Episode 45 #45 Built From Scratch: How A Couple of Regular Guys Grew The Home Depot from Nothing to $30 Billion
Founders

Episode 45: #45 Built From Scratch: How A Couple of Regular Guys Grew The Home Depot from Nothing to $30 Billion

Founders

Episode 45

#45 Built From Scratch: How A Couple of Regular Guys Grew The Home Depot from Nothing to $30 Billion

David Senra is the host of Founders, where he studies history's greatest entrepreneurs. This is what he learned from reading Built From Scratch: How A Couple of Regular Guys Grew The Home Depot from Nothing to $30 Billion by Bernie Marcus and Arthur Blank.

What I learned from reading Built From Scratch: How A Couple of Regular Guys Grew The Home Depot from Nothing to $30 Billion by Bernie Marcus and Arthur Blank. 

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The creation of The Home Depot began with two words: "You're fired!" [0:01]

Blinders on focus on the customer [5:45]

Learning how not to manage people from Ming the Merciless [8:37]

Meeting Ken Langone / the prehistory of Home Depot [11:00]

81% private / 19% public partnerships [18:40]

Ken sells to Ming. Predicts Ming will fire Bernie [28:30]

Getting fired was the best thing that ever happened [35:00]

Bernie Marcus at 49 years old: little cash and a ruined reputation [38:15]

How Bernie Marcus walks away from Ross Perot [38:50]

The importance of equity [49:19]

Do not work with people who don't know how to care about other people [51:00]

How they got the money to open The Home Depot [55:30]

The critical importance of selling at the right price [58:32]

Knowing the right way to do something by seeing it done the wrong way [1:08:54]

Mistakes can teach us we're never as smart as we think we are [1:11:25] 

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#45 Built From Scratch: How A Couple of Regular Guys Grew The Home Depot from Nothing to $30 Billion

Introduction

"The creation of The Home Depot began with two words in the spring of 1978, 'You're fired.' 20 years ago, we were two out-of-work executives. Our situation was not a lot different than millions of others who were shown the door. We had little in the way of capital and faced some daunting personal and legal challenges as we tried to get our careers back on track. In our early years, we lived on the edge with no balance sheet and a lack of financing. It took great romancing to establish the vendor base necessary to open and maintain the broad product selection for which we quickly became known. We were always pushing boundaries beyond where our industry's conventional wisdom suggested we could go.

Building The Home Depot was a tough uphill battle from the day we started in a Los Angeles coffee shop shortly after we were fired. No one believed we could do it. While we want to tell the story of The Home Depot because it's a great entrepreneurial tale, our larger goal is to convey what we learned along the way about customers, associates, competitors, growing a business, building a brand and many other topics everyone in business needs to know. This book is the story of that virtually unparalleled growth and the values and culture that nourished it."

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