Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Building Hobby Lobby's Legacy—One Leader at a Time | Mart Green
Thu, 15 May 2025
What if the key to building a lasting legacy is choosing the right people? In this episode, Mart Green shares lessons from leading at Hobby Lobby, launching Mardel, and building teams with vision and purpose. Watch video and download the leader guide: https://www.life.church/leadershippodcast/building-hobby-lobbys-legacy-one-leader-at-a-time-mart-green
Chapter 1: What are the early mistakes in hiring?
Yeah, I'd say early mistakes that I learned was sometimes I knew that I didn't have the right person, but I kept just hoping it would work out, making that hard decision to sell somebody a different career. So I would say early on I did not let people go as early as I should have, even though I knew I'd hired wrong because I was learning how to hire.
So obviously my skills weren't too good at doing that in the beginning. I learned through the process that actually it's a double negative. One, I'm hiring somebody that I don't need, is not able to do the job. And two, they're not getting ready to go to their next opportunity.
Hey, it's great to have you back for another episode of the Leadership Podcast. And today, I have a guest that is going to encourage you, equip you, and inspire you in a massive way. I want to tell you about my very good friend, Mark Green, who is the founder of Bardell Christian and Education Supply with over 40 locations and over 800 employees.
Mart is the Ministry Investment Officer of Hobby Lobby, a business started by his family with over 1,000 stores across the United States. He is one of the most successful business leaders truly that I know anywhere in the world and one of the biggest forces for good, making a difference in the world. Mart has a new book out called Learning to be Loved. I'll show you the book if you're watching.
It's a great book, the everyday believer's guide to a rich relationship with God. Outside of all these business and ministry accomplishments, this is one of the most humble men that I know, one of the most generous men alive today. and full of integrity. It's an honor to have you on.
Mart, on one hand, I've got five trusted voices that I call when I need good advice, and you are on that hand as one of the five top most trusted voices. And so I'm really excited to introduce you to our leadership community. Welcome aboard.
Well, thank you, Craig. And you've given me a lot of advice in my life. So I have less than five I get that from.
Well, maybe I've given you advice before you ask, and that's one of my weaknesses. But I'm really glad to have you on, and I want to hear a lot of your story. But one of the things I like to ask early on, because it's interesting to hear from our guests –
Was there a time in your life, maybe early on, before you had any of the success that you see that you recognize, oh, wait a minute, maybe I have some leadership gifts or the ability to make a difference in people's life? Do you remember the first time you recognized that?
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Chapter 2: How did Mart Green recognize his leadership gifts?
So we've had a lot of meals together, spent a lot of time together. I did not realize you were 19.
Yeah, yeah. So that's why I said a little bit crazy. So I came home. I have no clue what I was doing. I learned a little bit from my dad, obviously.
So tell me the story of starting. What did that look like?
Yeah. First, it looked like finding a location. So I drove through Oklahoma City, our hometown here, and I found a location. It was 6,000 square feet. At that time, I thought that's too big for a Christian bookstore. So my dad said, well, put office supply in. I hate going to office supply. That was before Office Max, Office Depot, all this. And so now I have to learn the Christian industry.
And now I got to learn office supplies. At 19, you don't know much about either one of those. And so I was thrown into the fire and Trucks would back up with all this stuff. I had no clue what a hanging file folder frame was, all that. So I'm curious, you had no experience. Well, I had 10 years. I remember I started at nine gluing frames. So you're a frame gluer.
You have great frame gluing skills.
Yeah, I do.
So typically when you start a business, you have to understand a little bit about cash flow, recruiting people, creating systems, creating a culture. What were some of the first things that you learned that you didn't know when you were starting out?
The importance of people, getting the right people. And then when you're 19, you're just looking for somebody who comes in the door, and then you get a little more discerning. How do you find the right people? Obviously, it's easy to find people your age. When you're 19, you wind up hiring people not too far from your age. Well, sometimes that works, sometimes it didn't.
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Chapter 3: What is the importance of empowering people?
Chapter 4: How to deal with underperformance in the workplace?
Early on, you had to do some things right, maybe intuitively, maybe accidentally. What were some of the things that in the early years of building what's now so many stores across the country, what were the big pieces that you got right that helped create a foundation to build on?
For me, what I needed really, I think, was learning. I had to go out and really learn a lot. So I didn't know the best-selling books. I didn't know a lot of stuff. And that's back before we had computers. So I had Microfish. So I'm getting Microfish in.
I'm going down the library, just working really hard to understand the industries I was getting into, which was the Christian industry and the office supplies. Because again, I came in with no information on either one of them. Outside, I had a... Kirkbride Bible, maybe, you know, Thompson chain Bible at that time. So I think working hard was part of that and just being a lifelong learner.
I always want to learn. I've always been a lifelong learner. And so I just feel like jumping in and learning about that and, uh, and making some mistakes. And, uh, like I say, some of the mistakes I made, I held on too long with employees, others, I was easier for me to move on and said, well, that doesn't work. Let's, let's move on.
Talk to me about the learning part. Um, Where do you go? What helps you to continue to grow? Even years later, to this day, we can't meet. If we met once a week, every week you'd come in with a new theory, with a new something you're working on. Tell me about what goes into your personal growth strategy.
Early on for the business, I would go to other Christian bookstores and find out where the best Christian bookstores are. I just called my reps. Hey, you sell books. Who's the best in the country? Okay, I'm flying all over this country just going and looking and learning.
And it was huge for me because sometimes your brain is a certain size, but I wanted to go stretch my brain, see something, see the best. And so that's what helped me as far as the Mardell stores.
And what about today? When you are... you're at the top of your game in many fields. And we're going to talk about some of the different fields because you started in retail and you scaled that up and went through different seasons from starting to whitewater through sustaining, recreating, keeping it fresh. And then you branched out from there.
But in the meantime, now today, all these years later, at the top of many different fields, what is your growth strategy to look like to keep sharpening yourself?
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Chapter 5: What were some early successes in building Hobby Lobby?
And so I don't want to try to bring out of you those weird things and tell our community, like, you all need to go be like Mark. But what I do want to do is I want to highlight them so they can say, what are those weird things that I need to do that help me grow or become better or become sharper? And so let's just look back what you do. You read a book. You highlight it.
You go back through, pick out your favorite. And I've looked at your favorite quotes, and it's not just like four quotes. It's like 20% of the book sometimes. Sometimes. Sometimes it can be 20% of the book. And then you document it, and you said you gave over 1,000 basically book summaries or book highlights. Yes. To your kids and you have those accessible.
And so if I ask you and I have before, I'm going to take a week off. Hey, what do you recommend I read? And you can, then what do you have for me? Besides recommendations, you've got summaries.
Yep.
And you've also read over a thousand books that you thought were noteworthy. So that says a lot.
Yeah. Just today, earlier, I was talking to a guy, and we got into a conversation, and I said, oh, I'll send you my favorite quotes. Then I'll say, hey, if you want to read the book, fine, but if not, at least get the favorite quotes. But yeah, they come back to me, and so I've learned so much from other people.
And then you'll probably revisit those at times. And I also like what you said. You're an introvert, and so you learn better that way. And so what I try to get our community to do is see how you're wired and designed, and then go – create a plan that works best for you in that way. I'd like to hear about some of the other things that are unusual that help make you into the leader that you are.
One of the things is if we had a special moment together at some point or had a conversation or whatever, you would be able to bring that back up and would over and over again. Tell me about... how you document why you do it, what that means to you, how you would use it relationally. What's the process look like that in your life?
Yeah, I guess it goes back to another weakness because my weakness on reading books is I wish I could remember what I read. And that's why I get the quotes and go back to them. So when I meet people for the first time, usually I'll document when we met them, what the occasion was, and maybe two or three facts about them. They've been married for 30 years. They got three kids or whatever.
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Chapter 6: How does Mart Green continue to grow personally and professionally?
What's really meaningful is that you brought things to me and some of the most meaningful gifts didn't really cost a lot of money, but they were very, very thoughtful. And all the way down to, and again, this is so second nature to you, but there are how many... anniversaries of something do you think that you would remember about me if you were just kind of following in your normal routine?
Yeah, quite a few of them. Quite a few, right?
Yeah, quite a few.
And I don't have anybody else that would do that. And there's nothing manipulative about it because I really don't have anything to give you. All we have is the opportunity to do things together. And when you started... treating me well. We had no strategy together. There was no... There were just two people in the same town that kind of had a common faith, but nothing else.
And so, that to me is what I'm trying to bring out. And I feel like I'm way undervaluing what you do, but you... You meet with people. You find out what they care about. You find out what's going on in their life. You document it. And the next time you're there, you will ask them about it. You might bring them a book about it. You might have a gift that has something about it. And it's consistent.
It's pure in motive. It's rare. And it's meaningful. And I'm going to ask you a question that may not be an answer to this, but is there a story behind it? Is there a something in life that just created that in you that it's not everybody else?
Great question. I've never thought of it. And I'll have to think longer about it because nothing comes to my mind at the very top. I just maybe see my family being that way. I mean, I just saw my mom and my dad always care for people. And so, yeah, probably hereditary. And they saw their parents do that. And so I've heard story about my grandmother and her gift of generosity.
My grandmother was not – had no wealth. She'd have two dresses and she'd give one away. And so – She gave her a gift. She figured out the value of it because she thought she ought to pay tithes on her increase. She just loved people. She loved the Lord. Because she understood how much she was loved, it was easy for her to love.
If I had to go back to anything, I think it was modeled for me through a couple of generations of the people that I got to see.
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Chapter 7: What is the significance of maintaining relationships?
I've never thought of this, but you actually were also involved in some what I call like rescue projects of big visible institutions. And you did work yourself out of that. Are you, in most cases, when you start, do you think this is a project I might have long-term oversight on, but I want to be in and out? I want to, I want to... make a difference and work myself out?
Is that, do you have that mindset going into most things?
Yeah, I do now. Cause I gave up Mardale that I'd done for 35 years to be available. And so that's kind of where I'm at. And there's some things I stay with longer Bible translation. I've been with for 15 years and I'm 2033. I'm going to be with it for at least another eight years trying to reach a goal. But yeah. So I kind of trying to figure out what's my identity.
And I try to get it down to a couple of words and through a long process, transformational unifier. So if I had to get myself down to two words, it'd be a transformational unifier.
So explain that to me in more detail.
So transformation means you got to transform something. You got to do things differently than what it was before. And you have the same time to unify. So the words are almost, seems like they're opposed to each other, but then how do you unify it? So I think of a bridge. And so a bridge, how do you bring two sides together to get something done that would not get done separately and
And I will be in it, and it will be in me, but it doesn't need me anymore, right? And so that's what I'm trying to define those projects, just like you, version. That doesn't necessarily need me, but I'm helping them to bridge, in the case, Bible translation, you know, that were needed.
So this is a crazy question, but I'm starting to get clarity. It's interesting. We've had, I've asked you a million questions before, and now at this moment, I'm getting clarity. You're a transformative unifier, which is, that's true. You always have... some kind of exterior motive. I mean, it's like, it's never for you, which is so odd.
Like it's always moving something else, usually a ministry or a mission forward. And you're always doing it with connecting people. You're always in the middle of, have you met this person? Have you met that person? And the interesting part is there are others who do it, but it's usually about building something I care about or building something for me. And yours seems to be others focused.
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Chapter 8: How does Mart Green define himself as a leader?
And what's interesting is I would think I would pick humility and I would pick integrity and like bringing a team member on. Generosity, I actually love the value of generosity. I would not have
put that in my top list but now that you say it it really makes a lot of sense that that would be a quality that is going to be um there's no way to be mission-minded if you are selfish there's no way to be helping others if you are selfish and so i appreciate that you mentioned um the lust of the eyes and and that wouldn't just mean like lusting after um someone as a you know after a person and
Yeah.
I think you're even referring to it as like the, um, lusting after the things of this world. And so when you, it was interesting is when you're, when you treat people well, when you surround yourself with good people, when you have good ideas, you tend to create value and often you end up making money. Uh, and is that good thing? Bad thing? What's, talk to me about what do you do?
What do you do with wealth?
Yeah, no, I think excellence is what we all are striving for, and excellence can bring that. How do you get mission fulfillment with economic sustainability? As a Christian, is there something wrong with making a lot of money? No, I don't think so. Okay. No, or you don't think so? No, no. Okay, I'm making sure. I know so. If you're going to be gray with me, I don't know. No, nothing wrong with it.
Nothing wrong with making money. Yeah. And in our case, we like to make more money because we give more money away. That's our motivating factor. We've not taken raises for 10 or 15 years now, you know, because God's done well for us. Don't feel sorry for me. There's nothing wrong with that. But what motivates us? Why do we put another store in? Why do we put 30 more stores?
That's just 30 more headaches that we're going to have. Because we love to give. We love to be generous. And we think if you do business with excellence, you can do business with excellence and you can make money. Yeah. God actually gave us work. Now, the fall may not work hard, but I think there's always been work. And so we get fulfillment in our work.
So based on what I read and studies, it seems that sometimes when people make more money, the percentage of what they give doesn't always go up. In fact, it often goes down. What would you say to somebody that is in that place that they are blessed maybe more than they expected? To talk about responsibility or do they have them? You got G-H-I.
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