Best of the Program | Guests: Rep. Thomas Massie & David Green | 10/20/22

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Today we begin with a really

story that I have, I don't think I've ever seen in America.

Would you agree with that, Stu?

Yes.

I've never seen

like a bizarre Putin kind of story happening in our own country.

Then we have Thomas Masseon, who tells us, you know, some other things about COVID, what is happening today with the CDC and how you and your family are going to be affected by it.

Boy, the fear and the madness.

Needs to end November 8th.

Just a quick reminder.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, you can rank and review or whatever.

Vote, vote.

That's probably more important.

And we also have, I think, a great out-of-the-box thinker who is a very successful businessman and also has come under fire by the federal government.

How he survived and how he built his business all on today's podcast.

First, Gold Line.

Look, Gold Line offers gold, silver, precious metals, and they're not right for everybody.

I will tell you that diversify, diversify, diversify.

You have to spread out because you don't know

what's going to be a value.

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you know, I have light bulbs.

It might become a light bulb economy.

I don't know.

For a while, it might be a light bulb economy.

I'm pretty sure that at the end of the road, it's not, you know, Scooby snacks.

It's probably gold or silver.

The world always resets to that.

And there's something disturbing I'm going to tell you about next week, about what the federal government, the treasury, is doing with our gold.

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Here's the podcast.

You're listening to the best of the Blendback program.

Hello, Stu.

How are you?

Good, how are you?

Oh, you know.

It's a ring endorsement of how you feel today.

Yeah, I think,

yeah.

You're a little tense, I noticed, coming in.

There's some news that seems to be a tad bothersome for

the future of the Republic.

Yeah,

there's a couple of stories out that are quite disturbing.

I think I'm going to start with

this one, and I want to read it verbatim.

It's from Rolling Stone magazine, something that I don't usually go to for all my facts and figures.

Or anything else.

Or anything else.

But

this is a really disturbing story.

And usually the Rolling Stone Magazine is on the left.

And so for them to bring this story to light is quite remarkable.

A minute before 5 a.m., April 27th, ABC News journalist James Gordon Meek fired off a single tweet with a single word, facts.

The network's national security investigative producer was responding to a former CIA agent

and his take that the Ukrainian military, with assistance from the U.S., was thriving against Russian forces.

This agent's tweet, filled with acronyms indecipherable to the layperson like TTPs, UW, and EW,

was itself a reply to a missive from Washington Post Pentagon reporter, who noted the wealth of information that the U.S.

military had gathered about Russian ops just by observing their combat strategy in real time.

The interchange illustrated the interplay between the national security community and those who cover it.

And no one straddled both worlds quite like ABC News Meek.

He was an Emmy-winning deep dive journalist who was a former senior counterterrorism advisor and investigator for the House Homeland Security Commission.

His detractors within ABC, Meek, was something of a military fanboy, but his track record of exclusives was undeniable, breaking the news of foiled terrorist plots in New York City and the Army's cover-up of the fratricidal death of private first-class David Sheratt in Iraq, a bombshell that earned Meek a face-to-face meeting with President Obama.

With nine years at ABC under his belt, a buzzy Hulu documentary poised for Emmy attention, and an upcoming book on the military's chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, the 52-year-old journalist seemed to be at the height of his powers and the pinnacle of his profession.

But outside his Arlington, Virginia apartment, a surreal scene was unfolding, and his storied career was about to come crashing down.

Meek's tweet marked the last time he posted on Twitter.

The first thing Meek's neighbor, John Anatoly, noticed that morning was a black utility vehicle with blacked-out windows blocking traffic in both directions on Columbus Pike.

It was just before dawn on that brisk April day, and self-described police vehicle historian Anatelli was about to grab a coffee at Starbucks before

embarking on his daily three-mile walk.

He inched closer to get a better vantage, and when he saw an olive green Lenco Bearcat G2,

an armored tactical vehicle often employed by the FBI among other law enforcement agencies, a few Arlington County cruisers surrounded the jaw-dropping scene.

But all of the other vehicles were unmarked, including the Bearcat.

Anatelli counted at least 10 heavily armed personnel in the group.

None bore anything identifying which agency was conducting the raid.

Just after 10 minutes, the operation inside the Sienna Park apartment complex, a six-story upscale building for D.C.

professionals, was over.

They didn't stick around.

They took off pretty quickly and headed west on Columbia Pike towards Fairfax County.

Most people seeing that green vehicle will think it's some sort of a tank, but I knew it was a Lenco Bearcat.

It's a vehicle designed to jump out of so you can do a raid in a quick amount of time, and it can return fire if they're being fired upon.

Multiple sources familiar with the matter say Meek was the target of an FBI raid at the Sienna Park apartments, where he had been living on the top floor for more than a decade.

An FBI representative told Rolling Stone its agents were present on the morning of April 27th at that block, but they could not comment further due to an ongoing investigation.

Meek has not been charged with a crime, but independent observers believe the raid was among the first and quite possibly the first to be carried out on a journalist by the Biden administration.

A federal magistrate judge in the Virginia Eastern District Court signed off on a search warrant that day before the raid.

If the raid was for Meek's records, U.S.

Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco would have had to give her blessings.

A new policy enacted last year prohibits federal prosecutors from seizing journalist documents.

Any exception requires the Deputy AG's approval.

They said, to my knowledge, there hasn't been any case since January 2021.

In the raid's aftermath, Meek has made himself scarce.

Now that's the first time.

This story takes a turn now

and

I'm not sure what we're getting here.

In the raids aftermath, Meek has made himself scarce.

None of his Sienna Park neighbors with whom Rolling Stone spoke with have seen him since.

with his apartment now appearing to be vacant.

Sienna Park management declined to confirm that their longtime tenant was gone, citing privacy policies.

Huh.

Okay.

Similarly, similarly,

you know, several ABC News colleagues who are accustomed to unraveling mysteries and cracking investigative stories tell Rolling Stones they have no idea what happened to Meek.

He just fell off the face of the earth.

And when people are asked, no one knows the answer.

ABC representative tells Rolling Stone, yeah, he resigned abruptly and he hasn't worked for us for months.

Really?

Sources familiar with the matter say federal agents allegedly found classified information on Meek's laptop during their raid.

One investigative journalist who worked with Meek says it would be highly unusual for a reporter or a producer to keep any classified information on his computer.

So now,

what happened to him?

He hasn't been seen since April.

The story goes on to,

I don't know.

It just gets fuzzy at the end.

Let me read you the last

Last paragraph.

It is unclear what story, if any, would have put Meek in the FBI crosshairs.

Meek worked on extremely sensitive topics from high-profile terrorists in America

and Americans held abroad

and the exploits of Eric Prince, the founder of the military contractor Blackwater.

In recent years, some of Meek's highest profile reporting delved into an ambush by ISIS, left four American Green Berets dead.

Meek and ABC adapted the story in a feature-length documentary which debuted last year year on Veterans Day on Hulu.

Okay.

Is anyone...

A.

Do we live now in Russia?

The FBI is completely and totally out of control.

A Emmy award-winning journalist

tweets facts

and then is whisked away

into black, we don't know if it's the FBI,

into black vans

where no one is wearing identification on their flak jacket.

Now, this sticks out to me because last night

I talked to one of the guys swept up by

the FBI.

Remember the father of 11?

He was on my show last night.

And I said, you know, how did it happen?

He said, they were pounding on the doors, pounding on the windows.

He said, I opened the window to see what was going on.

They had guns pointed at the front door.

I went to the door and I said, I'm opening the door now.

I asked them for identification.

And the FBI guy pointed to his chest with the little Velcro thing that said, FBI, and he said, that's your identification

now that's disturbing in the first place

but these guys didn't have any markings why

and where is this guy and why isn't why isn't the world of ABC on fire

where are the journalists if Donald Trump had anyone in a gray sedan, not even a black van, a gray sedan, an old one from the 60s, and an old lady got out and said, hey, I'm with the Trump administration and I just like to ask you about an article, they would have been screaming to high heaven.

Now we have

a FBI that is completely out of control.

And they pick up a journalist in April, and we're just hearing about it now.

That might be the most disturbing part of the story.

The fact that a journalist could be taken out of their home in a raid by the government, and no one, no journalist reports it, no one's tweeting about it, there's no discussions for six months.

Yeah.

And by the way, his partner who worked with him on

the documentary that they produced, he told Rolling Rolling Stone,

I'm not commenting on this story, and then hung up.

This is not good, America.

This is not good.

The fear

and the madness has got to stop.

We must end it, November 8th.

We must end it November 8th.

I don't think America, I don't know, I don't watch mainstream media anymore, so I don't know what everybody else is saying.

I don't even listen to other talk radio shows.

I don't listen to anything.

So I don't know what warnings you're getting elsewhere.

But if you're not hearing an urgent warning on the loss of your country, our Bill of Rights, your freedom, and your economic freedom,

you're listening to the wrong people.

This is

very disturbing.

This is amazing.

This is amazing.

Simon ⁇ Schuster, I'm just reading this some more.

He co-authored Americans Who Undertook One Last Mission and Honored Promise in Afghanistan, which he co-authored with Lieutenant Colonel Scott Mann, a retired Green Beret.

Meek even featured a picture of the soon-to-published book in his bio and social media.

But post-April 27th, the book jacket photo disappeared from his bio, and Simon ⁇ Schuster scrubbed his name from all of the press materials.

The first sentence of the jacket previously read, in April, ABC News correspondent James Gordon got an urgent call from a special forces operator serving overseas.

Now it says, in April, an urgent call was placed from a special special forces operation serving overseas.

Why is he being erased?

Why

is he being erased?

Welcome to 1982, gang.

This is the best of the Glenn Beck program, and we really want to thank you for listening.

Representative from Kentucky, Thomas Massey.

How are you, Tom?

Oh, I am doing well, Glenn.

Good.

Something evil is happening today.

Yeah.

So we were having a, I had an early morning producers conference, and there was a story out yesterday that talked about how the CDC was going to vote and try to get the COVID-19

vaccination into the, you know, you mumps and rubella category, and it would protect them if they could.

It would protect them from lawsuits.

And then this morning in the meeting, a couple of my producers said, no, that is not happening today.

We can't find it anywhere on the schedule.

What's happening?

It is.

It's happening.

It's happening.

It's happening.

I'm a U.S.

Congressman who does not go off half-cocked here.

I have researched this for hours.

I watched the entire meeting yesterday.

Yesterday they took a vote on what I call the PPP, the Pfizer Profit Protection Act.

Okay, this guarantees that after we go out of this emergency situation, the vaccines will still be purchased by the government.

That was the vote yesterday.

And it was unanimous.

It was unanimous, 15 to 0.

Today, at 1.20, on their schedule, there's a vote on adding COVID-19 to the childhood immunization schedule.

Now,

what your producers are correct about is that this won't make it mandatory for schools in every state, not immediately, but in some states it will when it kicks in.

Now, it looks like, based on the meeting I was watching this morning, because it's going on right now, they're doing this right now,

that this will kick in sometime in February, and then it will trigger automatic COVID mandates for schools in several states and for playing sports as well.

Now,

as far as liability goes, the vaccine manufacturers aren't worried about that yet.

That might not happen in this meeting because they've already got

protection from liability under the PrEP Act, which I call medical malpractice martial law.

You can't do it.

We are literally, the PrEP Act overrides every state law and every federal law on the books.

And the Nuremberg law.

Yes.

And the laws of humanity.

You can't even take them to court.

I have a woman in my district who went in to get a COVID test.

By the way, everything's covered.

If it has anything to do with COVID and it's under an EUA, everything's covered by the PrEP Act.

A woman in my district in Kentucky went to the hospital to get a COVID test.

They stuck the swab so far up her nose, they punctured the membrane that keeps your brain fluid in.

Oh, my God.

Her throat, required surgery to fix, and

she could not sue the people that did that to her because they said they didn't do it on purpose.

That's how expansive the PrEP Act is.

So they're not worried about liability right now, the vaccine manufacturers, but they want to get this on the childhood schedule.

I've got a slide that was presented yesterday by Dr.

Sarah Oliver at their meeting that says incorporation of COVID-19 vaccines in the immunization schedule is an important step toward inclusion of COVID-19 vaccines in in routine vaccination program.

Now,

what that means, she's saying, in the mandatory vaccine programs in many states for your child to attend school.

Now,

here's another story I want to share with you.

You can't escape this.

If you're a working mom, a single mom, and you've got kids,

First and foremost, you'd hope your kids get educated at school, but the service they provide is daycare.

And a woman contacted me during the COVID shutdowns of the schools.

She had to lock her 12-year-old daughter in her apartment while she went to work at a bottling facility

for Soda Pop.

And

she said she felt guilty when she was at work because she was afraid her daughter might be eating all of their food, which she didn't know when she could get more of it.

A mom like that cannot take her kid to private school.

This is a sentence for single working parents and for double parents at work.

And for parents that would like to live a normal life, but don't believe that an mRNA vaccine should be put into my child's arm.

Absolutely.

And listen to this, here's another one of their slides from yesterday.

By the way, they're going to vote on this today after lunch.

But one of their slides yesterday, when they were promoting the vaccine for kids ages 5 to 11, one of the things they they promoted as a benefit is rates of myocarditis after primary series in children ages 5 to 11 are considerably lower than rates in adolescents.

In other words, myocarditis caused by the vaccine, they are promoting the fact that kids 5 to 11 should get the vaccine because they're at lower risk of getting myocarditis from the vaccine than kids than their older siblings.

How about no human-made risk?

How about that one?

Can we do that one?

How about a risk versus reward

benefit calculation that takes into account prior infection and natural immunity?

Because the CDC is in complete denial of that for children.

They don't talk about it in any of their slides.

And they also, this goes against everything we've ever heard about children are the least

likely to get it or to have a bad spell with it.

Why?

They have another slide where they show

where infants get COVID that are in the hospital and ages 65 and up having COVID.

On that slide, it's a graph.

You can't even see the line for children ages five to 17.

They're not even visible in that graph because they're basically on the x-axis.

There's just this flat line.

You can't even measure them unless you zoom in and zoom in and zoom in.

This is not a childhood disease.

you know you were mentioning the vaccination schedule for children for things that children get this is not a childhood disease that particularly you know affects children it's mostly an adult disease so so Thomas why is this being done

you know in

In Congress, they teach us not to question the motives of our colleagues.

I'm not looking to question a motive.

They might be thinking that they're doing exactly the right thing.

There are people, there are actually people that think reducing the surplus population of Earth

is a good thing.

We called them Nazis, but many of them believed that was the right thing to do.

So I'm not questioning motives.

I'm asking why?

Why would you do this?

Even if you think you're doing right,

science doesn't show that.

Well, i think they want to destroy the control group and then there there's absolutely no liability when we re-enter the regime where there should be liability and by the way the 15 people who voted yesterday are the same ones who are going to vote today they're chosen to be on that committee because they have doctor or phd after their name they are they are the seed that leads to all the mandates for the kids because they give the imprimatur of science to CDC, which is a lot, it lacks all credibility, but they want to bring in this group.

And the group is pre-selected to be cheerleaders for vaccines.

But even this group was somewhat skeptical of a few slides yesterday.

There was a slide that showed that pregnant women, 60 to 70 percent of pregnant women, have gotten the vaccine.

And even one of the vaccine cheerleaders said, I find this sketchy.

So they're even a little bit doubtful.

The votes happen on their agenda at 1:20 today.

So, what can we do about this?

Well, at 1 o'clock, they have 20 minutes of public comment.

Yesterday, they allowed six people to comment.

There's virtually no chance of getting in orally during that public comment, but you can submit something written.

But I think just raise heck with your congressman because if Republicans get the majority back, we can defund this activity.

Are we going to?

I don't know.

It's the question every person, whether they're running for school board or dog catcher or U.S.

Senate, needs to be asked in front of a camera: do you support mandatory COVID vaccines for children in order to go to school or play sports or anything like that?

I don't care if you're a Republican or Democrat.

Don't give anybody a pass unless they've answered that question.

I mean, I have a lot of them.

Do you,

will you allow the FBI to continue to scoop up old ladies in a bogus face act arrest

while not leaving, you know, not leaving every breadcrumb and every piece of evidence just sitting waiting for an FBI agent to show up on the people who are firebombing pro-life clinics?

I mean, this is.

If the Republicans win, and I think they're going to, and if they win the House and the Senate, I have to tell you,

you know this, Thomas.

Pitchforks and torches are coming because a lot of people know our rights are being lost every day.

Every day.

I sound like a broken record on this.

I probably mention it every time I go on your show.

We've got to separate the spending bills into separate bills.

If Republicans do an omnibus bill, the fix is

They will say we can't get blamed for shutting down the government because we have to win the White House in two years, so we can't defund the FBI's, you know, rounding up old ladies and putting them in jail.

You know, it's about 2024.

That's all false.

Separate the bills, fund NASA, fund the roads, fund the bridges, you know, pay the soldiers, and then defund the 87,000 IRS agents in a separate bill.

Well, I think,

I mean, the strategy that I would use if I were on the left, I would

have you guys be responsible for, quote, collapsing the economy.

And so I think every

single politician is going to be afraid of doing that.

And it will be scaremongering tactics.

I mean, I've already heard on national media that we are going to lose our credit rating status because we will just default on all of our loans.

We don't default.

We don't default.

That's a lie, is it not?

Go ahead.

It is a lie.

Here's the Thomas Massey plan.

If I were Speaker the day after

January 4th, I would pass, and this is hard for me to do, I would pass a continuing resolution that doesn't kick in for nine months.

It would fund all of government at 90% of current levels so that for nine months, Republicans have a runway where Democrats can't say, if you don't get your job done, the government's going to shut down.

No, the government will be funded at a dime less on the dollar, but we could also cover, make sure we are going to pay off all our debts and we're not going to default in that same CR.

And that way you take that argument away from the media and Joe Biden.

Do you think anybody will listen to you on that one?

It's getting some traction.

Good.

Good.

People who want to hide behind an omnibus don't like it.

And by the way, that CR would only kick in nine months later if we don't do our jobs, which is to pass 12 separate spending bills.

Thomas, do we have

a constitutional republic that we're living under right now?

We do not.

We have raw power in the form of

a collusion between the social media companies, the government, the pharmaceutical companies, and the FBI,

the federal police.

It's a collusion.

I'll throw in the USDA and the food processors.

It's

in a libertarian sort of fantasy, there are no laws to prevent you from doing things, but you still have liability.

You still can sue somebody if they hurt you or mislead you or cheat you.

But what we live in today,

it's not even communism.

It's a form where they've empowered the private companies.

The government works hand in hand.

So when they need to violate your constitutional rights, they use the private company.

When they need to violate the law, they use the government.

They work together.

There's a name for that kind of government.

Exactly.

There it is.

I won't give it with you on the phone because then you'll have to pay all kinds of prices for it.

Don't use the F word.

Thomas, thank you so much.

All right, thank you, Glenn.

God bless.

Please get involved with this.

Call your congressman, call your senator, and vote.

Vote.

The fear and madness must end November 8th.

The best of the Glenn Bank program.

So, there is a new book out.

It is called Leadership Not by the Book by David Green and Bill High from Hobby Lobby.

Welcome, David.

How are you?

Thank you.

It's good to be here with you.

Oh, it's good to see you again.

Yeah.

So, first of all, I did a special last night

about how the FBI and the federal agencies and the media are weaponizing against Christians, and as individuals and as business?

You

were, your fine was how much?

Well, they were going to fine me $1.3 million a day if I didn't follow their instructions because we got that number by the number of employees we had.

It's like a thousand dollars a day per employee.

So that was a lot of money.

So 1.3 was what we were looking at.

And

all you had to do was just offer birth control or abortion, right?

There were four pills that we and prescriptions that we could not provide because we knew that it was after the fact that we were taking life and we knew that we just could not do that.

And we had that in our had to have that in our when we signed our next insurance

policy.

And so this was what the government was asking us to do.

And you're just...

We knew we couldn't do it.

You know, it was just some things, as you were saying earlier, you just can't do.

You can't go against your conscience.

And they were asking us to go against our conscience.

So you won that case.

We did win that case.

Yeah.

Thank God you won that case.

And

that,

you know, that changed the course, I think, for

the first real big win for America as we have known it in the past.

Which sure helped us because

we didn't know what we were going to do.

Because people would ask me, what do you do if you lose this case?

And I said, I don't know what we're going to do, but I do know what we're not going to do under any circumstances.

Are we going to pay for someone's abortive pill?

And that was what we had decided as a family.

In fact, we came together as our family.

We call ourselves Gen 1 and our kids Gen 2 and Gen 3.

And we had all of them in a meeting to say, do you see this any different?

Gen 3, the younger people in our family and all of us stood the ground and said, no, no, no, we're not going to take life

for the sake of making profit at hobby lobby stores.

So

let's talk about, by the way, I think what you went through, and I'd love to hear your opinion on this, it almost seems like the good old days compared to what we're facing now.

Things have gone pretty much south on a daily basis here.

I can't even imagine what the government's asking us to do and how they're coming against us if you want to be a Christian.

So somehow or another today, we're seen as the haters, and yet we have the greatest story in the world about Christ who died for us while we're yet sinners.

So we're not the haters.

We're the one that's got the best and the greatest love story in the world.

I have to tell you, I've met so many Christians that will come up to me and say, hey, Clinton,

what are we going to do?

And I'm like, well, there's only one thing left to do.

And it's what everybody dismisses.

But if we don't turn to God and ask him for forgiveness and help,

we're not going to survive.

He's the only answer at this point.

And people are like, yeah, yeah, yeah, I know, but what are we going to really do?

And I'm like, do you not believe, do you not believe that the guy who rose from the dead, harder trick than fixing our country, is not, I mean, people of faith, I'm not sure that a lot of them really, truly have faith.

That when it comes down to it, yeah, whatever happens, it's in his hands.

Yeah, but I think there's something that we have to do.

So I think you'll see us, our family with a lot of other families coming on a program, and you're going to see it.

You're going to see it, the Super Bowl.

He gets us.

So we're wanting to say, we being a lot of different people, that he gets us.

He understands all of us.

He loves who we hate.

And so I think we have to let the public know and create a movement, really.

But that is a different, that's a different movement.

I agree with you on that.

There's lots we have to do, but that's one of the most important movements I've heard,

if that's what the movement you're doing.

He loves those who hate us.

Right.

So we have to find a way to love.

It It doesn't mean don't stand against it.

You've got to be firm and clear on your stance.

And I'm not moving, but I can't hate them.

That's right.

We have to present the only answer to this, and it's not politics.

And you've already said it.

It's him.

It's Jesus who died for us, loves us.

And until we accept him and know him and his scriptures and his book that he's given us,

we can't settle the problems we have.

So

you have written a book, Leadership Not Buy the Book.

You're the founder of Hobby Lobby, which started out, I love the way you begin,

you started out making frames with your family in the garage.

Exactly.

And our boys, I made seven cents a piece to put them together.

My wife worked for free for five years.

So we just crawled for a long period of time.

But we have been blessed to where today we do $8 million.

And so

we've come a long ways.

So, yeah, I think so.

From seven cents to.

So you have 12 principles in here, and I've highlighted a few of them, but I want you just to kind of give the overview of the book.

Okay.

I think, you know, people ask me why I write the book, and I think one of the greatest reasons I wrote it is for us to understand that we don't own what we have.

Not because I say so, because the scriptures in the Old Testament as well as the New Testament says that God owns everything.

And so I think as we see what we have, is owned by him, then we're nothing but servants.

And I say nothing but I would rather be

to serve and to be us

to take care of what God has given us than to have ownership.

If you really studied down on those that have been wealthy, wealth is a curse.

And so how do you handle the curse?

And that is to

be someone that takes

what God has given us and know how to handle it.

I think we used to understand that concept a lot more.

We were a country that had great wealth, but we helped.

We helped each other.

We were always the first on the scene.

And now,

I mean, it's that's kind of like government does that.

You know, we just have this, we're just not the same people.

Well, the government's done too much, and that's why sometimes we've backed off where we should not have backed off.

So we want to make sure that what we do with our profits really makes a difference.

Okay, so let's go through some of the principles that I'd like to talk to you about.

Build for the next 150 years, not just the next generation.

I don't think there's people that I think there's lots of people that are just building for tomorrow, not even the next generation.

This is more Chinese in your thinking.

Explain.

Well, I think it's also thinking about what we're doing in our lifetime.

What are we doing that doesn't matter 100 years from now?

If you get to thinking and drilling down on that, you want your life to be something that's eternal and not just temporal.

So that's what we're doing there.

And so we're doing it with making sure that our children come along and serve the Lord and also have the same priorities you do, and that is to have Hobby Lobby going on forever if possible, and then be a ministry to those that are in need.

How do you go from a framing place

to everything you sell with that?

I think there's a lot of people

they separate.

I want to talk about family too, because you talk about this separation.

They separate

God and their faith from their business.

And they'll come up with all kinds of excuses that, you know, I got to do what I got to do.

Right.

We got to do business.

Right.

I don't know how you do it without trying to find the book.

This book is called Leadership Not by the Book, but it hopefully is by the book.

Right.

And I really don't know how you do it without following the book because it gives us so much.

Our creator has given us a book that really will help us.

What are some of the business decisions that you had to make that, you know, that on the surface were nuts?

That regular business people go, that, that, no.

But you just had assurance, I know this is what he wants me to do, and it'll work out.

I think one of those things, and there are a lot of them, I think one of them is just how we treat our employees.

Yeah.

I sense the Lord just gave me the Holy Spirit that you need, you're in charge of these people.

I'm putting you in charge of those people.

And so now you're saying, well, what does that look like?

Well, it looks like they need to go to church on Sunday, so you got to close on Sunday.

It looks like maybe that you ought to close at 8 and only open open 66 hours a week.

It looks like maybe your minimum wage ought to be $18 an hour.

It looks like maybe you ought to have seven different

chaplains to help the people in need that have different problems.

So I think it looks like

that.

And all of these things, by the way, are biblical, but it's also good for business.

We are very, very profitable.

We have no debt.

And I think...

Because people would say, because I know you write about it in the book, people say, how can we get to, you know, $16 an hour?

And you're like, we're getting up to $18.50 an hour.

What are you talking about?

And everybody will say, as I know, I've been around business my whole life.

People will make the argument, you can't overpay.

You can't make your hourly wage that high because you won't be able to afford it.

It'll jack prices up.

Yeah, when we first started, we just tried to survive.

So you need to understand that.

It was just surviving.

But as we tried to follow the book,

which what other book do you want to guide your life by?

There's only one book that's of God.

The rest of them are man.

There's only one, and that's his.

And he's given us a book, a direction book.

And when we follow it, I don't know that there's a, I can't tell you of a better way to run a business than following the book and follow things that I think would be pleasing to everyone.

But tell me how

faith is one thing, but talk to somebody who doesn't necessarily have the faith, just about how the principle of paying your employees doing all of the things that you do,

how do they convince somebody who doesn't necessarily may have faith, but not your kind of faith.

Yeah, well, my kind of faith believes that God's Word, of course, is where we're going to be best in our life, in everything that we do.

He's given us a direction.

Our Creator gave us a direction book.

But if you don't have faith, why doesn't it look good to take care of your people and they take care of yours if you had no faith at all?

How does that not look good?

How does what we're being told in God's book, how does it look wrong?

It just seems to make also common sense, and that's to care for people if you really want them to care for you.

So people know, by the way, who Hobby Lobby is before they even knock on the door for an application.

And because of that, I think we get the very, very best people that are out there.

People that have a work ethic, people that have integrity.

And so I think that's one of the secret sauces is just to have great, great people.

It is, it's weird, too, as somebody who is a conservative and a religious person that I was at, I can't remember what city it was in, but I think there was a Michaels and I didn't know that there was a hobby lobby.

We go into the Michaels and it was just, it was just not good.

And I'm like, we got to find a hobby lobby, got to find a hobby lobby.

We go into hobby lobby, and it was like this little island of respite.

It was just like,

I know things are safe here.

I know things are, the people are going to be nice.

You know, nobody's judging.

Nobody, I don't have to have any kind of stupid societal rules.

You know,

it's nice.

It's nice.

I don't know if you're.

You know who we are when you're in our stores.

You see, you hear beautiful Christian music.

Every department has something that

glorifies our Lord.

And if you come in the front of the store and there's Bibles and there's good Christian books.

We have like a miniature Christian bookstore right in the front of our stores.

You are breaking every rule of business.

Right.

You know, it's okay.

You would, I know, I know, but I mean, if you were just a business person, I think you would walk in and say, you're going to be a nice niche store.

Yeah.

You'll never be hobby lobby.

And it's just amazing.

Yeah, we're proud of what God has given us.

And by the way, I give a glory to a lot of great, great people.

We have just a lot of great people.

Our officers, by the way, average over 25 years.

So we have people that stay with us.

They love it.

They love it because they know they're doing something other than just doing something to make the owners rich because that's not what they're doing.

This really stuck out on me in the book.

Yeah, family first.

My family comes first after my business stabilizes.

After I'm done working on my master's degree, I complete my PhD.

I just have to finish this one project and things are going to change.

I've said that.

I hear that all the time.

You say

no, family first.

That's right.

And when we bring our leaders in, we tell them the same thing.

You say, you know, the easiest thing for you to do is your career.

That is the easiest thing.

But you know what the hardest thing is?

Is your marriage and raising children that come up to serve the Lord?

And so I really want them, as well as myself, to make sure we know what's most important in our lives.

So that's something that you can do.

But how did you

start that?

How do you convince somebody that is like overwhelmed at work?

They're like, no, I got to get this done or I'll lose my job.

Yeah, I think that

I just think if we think very long and we create all of this wealth and have no family and our kids are messed up, can't we think a little bit about that and know that it, how can we not get there, that our family is the most important?

That has to be, I don't know how you not get there, to be honest with you.

Yeah, we usually say God

country family, but the founders were very clear.

It is God, family, country, because without the family, there is no country.

Exactly.

Without the family, there is no job.

Eventually,

thank you so much for coming along.

David Green, Bill High, the name of the book is Leadership by the Book: 12 Unconventional Principles to Drive Incredible Results.

Leadership by the Book.

Very good.

As always, thank you.

Great to talk to you.

Enjoyed it.

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