Epoch Times - This Retail Giant Gives Away Half Its Profits, Closes on Sunday, and Sued the Government—and Won
Aired: 2025-10-30
Duration: 01:43


=== Doing the Right Thing (01:43) ===

[00:00:00]  Our culture is one that doesn't please everybody.
[00:00:04]  But we have found out in every area in life, it seems like, or in our business, where things look like it wouldn't work.
[00:00:11]  It doesn't.
[00:00:12]  For instance, closing on Sunday didn't work either.
[00:00:14]  So when we closed on Sunday, we did less business.
[00:00:17]  When we stopped selling Halloween, we did less business.
[00:00:21]  But I can name seven or eight different things that when we did, it cost us.
[00:00:25]  But it was the right thing to do.
[00:00:26]  So I think God is asking us to do the right thing and not what's most profitable.
[00:00:31]  It wasn't most profitable to sue the government, but at the same time, I think God blesses us when we do what we should do rather than what's maybe more profitable.
[00:00:41]  There was one store that we had to leave after we'd been there five years.
[00:00:44]  We had 10 years left on the lease, and it was good when we signed it, but the neighborhood went down, and it seemed like that can happen over just a few years.
[00:00:52]  And it was a bad neighborhood, and so we knew we needed, we were putting people in the store in harm's way, and so we knew we needed to walk away from this.
[00:01:00]  And we had a wholesale liquor company that would take our lease and take us out of it.
[00:01:05]  And I thought, no, we just can't do that.
[00:01:07]  And so I thought, well, someone would say, well, God's going to bless you for that, but we paid 10 years on that lease.
[00:01:13]  So that's one of the many that I could tell you where we did the right thing, but it didn't necessarily directly look like it was the right thing.
[00:01:21]  And that's what we're supposed to do, I believe.
[00:01:23]  We're supposed to do things because it's right and not because it's profitable.
[00:01:27]  But over the years, God has blessed Hobby Lobby, even though we've made those kind of decisions, like suing the government or closing on Sundays or not selling Halloween.
[00:01:36]  So there's a lot of those type.
[00:01:37]  I just gave you one, of course, with this space that we had that we needed to get rid of it for 10 years.