Kathy English
You. Hello. I’m Kathy English, and I want to welcome you to Profiles and Stewardship, where my husband, Bill English, has conversations with business owners about how they integrate their role as business leaders with their faith in Jesus Christ. Today, Bill is talking with Ken Larson, the founder of Slumberland, a retail chain that has grown to 126 stores across twelve states. Ken is passionate about helping Christian business owners finish well, finish strong. Ken and Bill will also discuss common best practices and mistakes people make regarding family business succession. And you’ll hear Ken say, success without succession is not success. I hope you’ll find their conversation helpful and encouraging. So grab a cup of coffee, sit back and learn from Ken Larson in this Profiles and Stewardship episode.
Bill English
Welcome. I am Bill English, the publisher here at Bible and Business. Bible and Business is my ministry and it exists to help Christians in business integrate their leadership roles into their faith and to understand all that the Bible says about owning and leading in business. So I want to thank you for joining us today. Today’s episode is part of a growing series that I have titled Profiles and Stewardship. These interviews are intended to illustrate what Christian stewardship looks like in the real world for Christian business owners and Christians who lead in business. So from time to time, I talk live with business leaders about how they integrate their leadership role into their Christian faith. These Profiles and Stewardship are unscripted, they are real, and the videos are unedited. I only do one take of these interviews and they are hosted on the Bible and Business YouTube channel. Today I’m talking with Ken Larson. Ken is the founder of Slumberland Furniture, a leading home furniture retailer with 126 stores in a twelve state area. Ken has been named the Retailer of the Year by the National Home Furnishing Association, as well as Entrepreneur of the Year for Minnesota and North Dakota.
Bill English
His board work includes having been on the Health East Healthcare provider board in St. Paul. He is a past chairman of the board of the Evangelical Free Church of America, as well as a past chairman of the board of the Evangelical Free Church Ministries and Missionaries Retirement Fund. He’s a trustee for the University of Northwestern and St. Paul. And by the way, that’s also where I’m on Faith Radio there through the University of Northwestern St. Paul, and currently he serves on the board of Transworld Radio and the board of the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability. Ken and Barbara served together as the boards of the Joshua Fund, founded by Joel Rosenberg, serving and blessing Israel with their neighboring countries. Ken is also the founder of 40 Winks, a nonprofit that gives new beds to kids that are sleeping on the floor. To date, 40 Winks has given more than 55,000 new beds to kids. Ken and his wife Barbara of 59 years. They have five adult children, 19 grandchildren, two great grandchildren and they have founded God’s Ancient Library, a ministry that gives old and rare Torah scrolls to Bible schools and seminaries. In the last six years, Ken has gifted more than 100 Torahs to schools around the world.
Bill English
Ken and Barb love spending time with their family. They are active in their church and we’re going to talk about that in just a little bit. And they love traveling to see what God is doing all over the world. So, Ken, welcome to Profiles and stewardship.
Ken Larson
Oh, Bill, this is great to be with you electronically and I just want to thank you for the privilege of being on your program.
Bill English
Well, thank you so much. Just a couple of housekeeping things for today. First of all, when I look to my left, I’m looking at another screen. It’ll look like I’m looking at Ken, which is a great thing for me to do, right, to look at Ken. But I’ll be looking at a second screen if I need to reference notes or some scripture. There’s also chat services and the various platforms that we’re restreaming on. And you can enter questions or comments in the chat services and they will show up here at my end and I will be able to incorporate your questions and your comments into our interview live. Also, I want you to know that we’ve had some technical problems with Ken’s audio today. So you may see his lips move and then the audio come over a few seconds later. It’s just how it is today. And we’re just going to roll with the punches here. So let’s start. Ken, I want to show this on screen. This is a ministry that you are leading. It’s called Finish Well, Finish Strong, and it’s really the core of your passion and your heart. Right now, you’re offering it through Rock Point Church in Lake Elmo, Minnesota.
Bill English
But people can attend online from anywhere in the world if they want to be a part of this. Why don’t we talk for a little bit about what Finish Well, Finish Strong is? And I think there’s going to be a lot of ground, we can tell here. So Ken, I’ll just throw this to you and say what is Finish Well, finish Strong, and how would somebody participate?
Ken Larson
Great. Well, the theme Finishing Well, Finishing Strong became an important concept to me after I became aware of some research that was done by Robert Clinton. I think he was in Talbot Seminary out in California and he wanted to study and understand how biblical heroes, old and New Testament, how did they finish? Did they finish well and finish strong, or? No, of the 50 that he studied and there was a grid that he put together that was consistent with every profile that they looked at and studied, only one third of our biblical heroes finished well.
Bill English
Isn’t that and if you think of.
Ken Larson
Some of the yeah, it’s amazing. Bill and it troubled me. And then he, Professor Clinton, went on to say, I wonder what it looks like today. And so he went back and then selected 1200 current Christian leaders in all sectors, everything from healthcare to large companies to entrepreneurs and teachers and everything out of the 1200. And he used then a screen that was similar, but adjusted for the cultural differences between Bible, New Testament, Old Testament times, and today, oddly enough, the number was the same. Only one third of our Christian leaders are finishing strong. And we all know of some of the iconic leaders that get a lot of publicity when there’s an issue, whether it’s moral, financial, or whatever. And those are a couple of the things that the professor identified. It is money, it is sex, it is power, it is ego and other culprits as well. The more I thought about that, I wanted to at least try to expose this concept of finishing strong, finishing well. And so I adjusted one of the ministries that you referred to at Rockpoint Church, where I had for about 20 years done a monthly discussion around biblical principles in being a business leader or a ministry leader.
Ken Larson
And so we kind of moved away from that after many months of meetings and then started to study this concept of finishing well, finishing strong. So I’ve done a little teaching on it, but I’ve interviewed many people, including you, Bill, and again, thank you. Your interview was very well received, not only in person, but online. Yeah. Again, thank you.
Bill English
You’re welcome.
Ken Larson
I think it’s fair to say that most people think of finishing well and finishing strong for people that are in their fourth quarter of life. Yeah, or the second half of life. That’s not the whole picture. We’ve had some young people speak and explain how they’re trying to finish well and finish strong. And I think it’s also fair to say that some of the people that have a blow up or an issue of not finishing well, finishing strong, we think of it as a one time event and build. It’s not. It’s an accumulation of small times, of giving in to maybe not telling the truth or exaggerating or getting too close to major issues. And over time, if that continues, that will lead to what could be a major blow up, a major failure. So it’s not that it doesn’t happen as a one time blow up. It’s accumulation of many things.
Bill English
You and I talked about this one day when I was driving back from Duluth. I was in the car, I don’t know where you were. And we were talking about the long term effects of decisions throughout life and how you just mentioned how we finish is really an accumulation of many decisions over many years. Some of our decisions in our twenty s and thirty s have trajectory power to influence how we’re going to finish in our seventy s and eighty s and people tend to think, well, business owners especially, right? And this is the world you and I live in. I’m going to sell my business. I’m going to monetize the value that I’ve created. I’m going to pay Uncle Sam his 50%, and I’m still going to have, I don’t know, 510 million, 15 million left over, and I’m going to do some volunteering and I’m going to go play golf. And that’s finishing well, right. But as Henry Cloud would say in his book Integrity, you’re never going to have all the gifting you need to be in business, but you do need all the character traits to make that gifting effective. And if you don’t have the character traits to finish well in your old age, it’s probably because you didn’t develop them when you were younger and those decisions are still affecting you from 20, 30, 40 years ago.
Ken Larson
That’s a great quote. I couldn’t agree more. And to your point of what do you do when you leave the business, I’d like to make just a couple of comments. One, the first one is people should prepare for that time, because one of the things that I have seen happen and talked with people, peers and other people that I know, they need to be sure they know who they are without the title of owner or executive president or whatever title they had. Our identity in today’s culture has too many links to the title that we have in life, and that’s not healthy.
Bill English
Yeah.
Ken Larson
So I have given that advice to many people as they go through the transition of selling their business and believing that golfing and fishing is going to be fulfilling. No, not that we can’t enjoy it.
Bill English
But it’s not, it’s not yeah, you’ve probably met more than I have, but I’ve met owners who would have very vacuous lives if they didn’t have the title owner and if they didn’t have the money. One of the things that I’m working with, four siblings who aren’t getting along, they’re in their early 60s, they all own parts of the business. And this idea of who are you apart from the business and apart from the money, who are you? If God took away the business today and God took away all your money, who would you be? That’s usually a really hard question for people to answer.
Ken Larson
It is. But it’s linked to something very important. And what I believe is it is linked to the concept of stewardship that each of us has responsibility for. With the business that we own, it’s easy to fall into the trap and say, well, I worked hard, I was smart, I did things well, and over time I accumulated, I did this and did that. The truth is, for a believer, for a disciple of Jesus, our stewardship responsibilities carried forward past the point of selling the business, retirement or some other event. We have the responsibility to use those resources in a way that would honor God.
Bill English
Show me where your money is. Christ said, this is the bill English paraphrase of Matthew five and six. Show me where your money is and I’ll show you what you love. Right. So tell me how you’re spending your money and your wealth that I, God now going back to deuteronomy eight, have enabled you to create in the first place. Show me what you’re doing with that and I’ll show you where your heart is. And I wish more Christian business owners understood that the wealth that they have is not theirs. It belongs to God to be used to further his kingdom.
Ken Larson
Absolutely. I’ll add one thing to what you just said. I believe if you can look at a person’s calendar and their checkbook, you will know an awful lot about how they make decisions and what is really important to them.
Bill English
Boy, that is good. That is good. Show me where you spend your time, show me where you spend your money, I’ll show you what’s your priority in life exactly. Yeah. I just want to say this. There are business owners out there who are going to retire with a million and a half or 500,000, and that’s all they’re going to have. And there are some who are going to retire with 50, 7100 million, 200 million or more.
Ken Larson
That’s right.
Bill English
It’s not about the amount of money. It’s always about your heart. It’s about, do you want to take what God has entrusted to you and reproduce it to the one he gave five talents to the other he gave two, but both of them doubled it and they got the same reward, more of the Master’s presence in heaven. Right. It’s not necessarily about the amount of money. It’s really about what’s in the owner’s heart.
Ken Larson
Right. One other thing, and I think I can just maybe move laterally for just a minute. At the end of life, when God talks to each of us about our life, about how we use our business, about how we use the resources and the assets that we have, I believe he’s going to ask us some of the most difficult questions, and they’re going to center around the motive of why we did things. I don’t think God really cares what kind of house I live in, the kind of car I drive, all of those things. But I believe with everything, I believe that God will ask us the toughest question, why did I want to buy that? Why did I want to drive that? And why did I want to do the other things with the resources that God entrusted to me? The motive, I believe, is more important to God than the actual item.
Bill English
Oh, hands down. Yeah. I would totally agree with you. I would totally agree with you on that. In anticipation of this interview, right, I did a little word study and I looked up the word finish throughout the entire Bible. Niv and I looked at most of the verses that contain the word finish. And one of the things that just jumped out at me is that in I’m going to say 95, 98% of the verses where the word finish occurs, there was always an action that followed it. In other words, there was a result of the finishing. Right? So that when we talk about finish strong, finish well, we’re really talking about the end of our lives. But there is a sense now, I have two thoughts here, and I probably shouldn’t have them. One is family and one is eternity. And I’ll start with the family one first. When we own family run businesses, there is a sense in which the founder or whoever’s family members are leading that business. There comes a point where they need to finish and pass it on to their next. Either they’re going to sell it or they’re going to pass it on to the next generation or whatever.
Bill English
But there’s always a what’s next? Right? What follows the finish? And back to your point, if you don’t have an identity apart from the owner and the money, there is no what’s next, right? So how does a guy or a gal who runs a successful business develop an identity apart from money and title so that there is a what’s next for them when the business is either sold or passed on?
Ken Larson
My mind wants to take that question in two different directions, so I may have to answer it two different ways. I want to give you a one liner that I have used for myself and I’ve passed on with others at the point of transition. And most of us know the word succession, and we all want to see succession in our business especially. It’s a family business to be done well. I have been on boards where succession wasn’t done well, and it’s ugly. I have seen some that have gone extremely well. But the phrase that I like and I want to place on me as I go through some of those transitions is success is not success without succession. Success without succession is not success. I will phrase it back that way, which means I own most of the actual process of succession. Too many times the one leaving wants to reach back and control too much of what’s happening. Too many times when the one leaving is second guessing the person that’s now charged with being the president, CEO, or whatever the top position is. And it’s deadly, absolutely deadly. So as the person goes through that transition, I believe they’re more responsible than the actual person that has the new position.
Ken Larson
Okay, I want to move back to the finishing strong and tell you a story about my life that really helped. Our company ended up being the sponsor of a phenomenal female Nordic skier from Minnesota. Her name was Jesse Diggins. As a freshman, she won the state meet by almost a minute in a 20 minutes race.
Bill English
Wow.
Ken Larson
She went on to be part of the US Ski team. And the US Ski team really worked with her parents to make sure that she trained properly, not too fast. But they didn’t want her to get her body blown out too quickly, because in Nordic skiing, females do not mature until late 20s, early 30s, whereas the gymnast females, their competitive years are age 1516. You see Olympic winners that are 15 years old. Yeah, not so she ended up being on the Olympic team and skied in Soshi, Russia. She did very well. She didn’t meddle, but she set records for the US women’s team in her first year at the Olympics. She was that good. As her sponsor, we said to her, because we’ve known her her parents, her father especially, has been an executive in our company. So we’ve known her since she was a baby. But as a member of the US Ski team, we would meet with her every year and talk with her about different issues. Near the end, before she won her first medal, I asked her a question that really changed the way I looked at finishing. And it was this.
Ken Larson
I said to her, Jesse, as I have been to the Olympics and watched you, and certainly watched many on the TV screen and even in person, I see you and others that have really put everything into the race fall over at the end and lay there. And I said, I may insult you. I hope I don’t, but is it because you’re just out of breath? Is it because it feels good after getting your body totally heated up to be on a cool surface? And instead of responding by calling me Ken, she said firmly, mr. Larson.
Bill English
If.
Ken Larson
I finish a race with anything left, I’ve had a bad race.
Bill English
Wow.
Ken Larson
And that took me back because I’m not one of those athletes. But I did do a marathon. I had something left. I’ve done other things in outdoor activity, and I’ve never been at a point where I didn’t have anything left. But I also then had to ask myself the question about finishing. Am I really committed to finishing my life with nothing left? And frankly, I changed my life mission statement as a result of that.
Bill English
Did you really?
Ken Larson
And I did. I will give you my life lit mission statement. My life mission statement is, I am a committed and growing disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ. I am all in being poured out until nothing’s left. And I’m finished. Lord help me finish strong. So here I am in my 70s, hearing that statement, and I had to admit to myself I didn’t fully understand finishing. But that example, her life example, did it. So when she actually was the first she was the first woman USA Olympian to ever medal in the Olympics, and she won a gold medal. She was interviewed following the win, and it was a close finish. I mean, it was literally less than a yard. Interviewed her and she admitted that as she approached the finish line, that she was trying to time it to where there was nothing left. She actually blacked out. And she said in the interview, I knew I was going to get a medal. I knew I would win one, but I didn’t know if it was bronze, silver or gold. There was nothing left when she won that medal.
Bill English
Wow. You know what strikes me about that story, Ken, and about your life mission statement, is that finishing strong, we finish the strongest at the very point when we are completely poured out and we’re completely the weakest.
Ken Larson
I’m not trying to compare anyone to the Apostle Paul. No one can be compared to that. But if you go to Philippians and read the last account, he’s in the jail near death, and he says he is like a drink or offering being poured out and just envision an upside glass as it drips out, as it drips out until there literally is nothing left. That was the apostle Paul. He finished strong. There was nothing left.
Bill English
That’s really challenging because we in America are taught to finish with a lot. Always make sure you have plenty of money in the bank, make sure that you’ve got all these things around you to provide your comfort and convenience. And yet to really finish strong means we give ourselves 100% to the Lord, and we are that drink offering, that’s being poured out. And we may finish with nothing left physically, nothing left mentally, maybe nothing left financially, but we were completely poured out.
Ken Larson
That’s right. That’s the challenge. That is the challenge. Don’t you be even pretending that I believe I’m an example of it. I don’t want that. I want the challenge for me. And it really is a personal issue with God. I care about that. I remind myself daily that that’s what my life is all about.
Bill English
So we are talking with Ken Larson, who is the founder of the Slumberland Furniture Store. It’s a leading home furniture retailer, I’m thinking, in the upper Midwest, is that right? The twelve states are kind of in the Midwest area.
Ken Larson
Yes, that’s right.
Bill English
126 stores in a twelve state area. And we’re talking today about Ken’s mission of finishing strong and finishing well. You can actually participate in Ken’s ministry. He holds monthly groups at the Rockpoint Church in Lake Elmo, Minnesota, but they also broadcast live. I believe they use Zoom, but whatever platform they use, you just go to Rockpoint Churchleadership and you’ll be able to participate and be a part of what Ken is doing there on a monthly basis. And so it’s really about finishing strong. Finishing well, that’s what we’re talking about today. I want to combine a couple of things here. I want to show you. When I wrote my book on Christian theology of business ownership. What I noticed was that or how I started the book anyways, the very first section was this Reigning with Christ. And I was trying to say that we need to connect how we live our lives as business owners with what we’re doing in eternity. And as we pour ourselves out here, I’m really thinking of Ephesians ten here. For we are God’s workmanship created in Christ Jesus to do good works which he has prepared in advance for us to do.
Bill English
Our whole lives, in a sense, are a preparation for eternity. How we respond to God, how we walk closely with Him, the things that he builds into us, he’s going to use in eternity. And I don’t know how, but I believe he’s going to use those. So we finish our lives, we pour ourselves out like the gold medalists that you described and the what’s next is we’re going to reign with Christ in eternity. Isn’t that really something?
Ken Larson
It’s great. Yeah. What could be better than that? What could be better than that? I love it.
Bill English
So tell us a little bit about let’s just do a little bit of housekeeping on your Finish Strong, finish well, monthly meetings. Tell people about how they can participate, what you try to accomplish in those meetings, so forth and so on. Let’s rummage there for a few minutes.
Ken Larson
Yeah. Like we interviewed you, we gave you some opening questions, and you responded beautifully about how you see finishing strong and what it means to you personally and your understanding of it. We have used a broad range of people to talk on this subject. We have a very interesting one coming up in March. As an example, we have an artist who’s a sculptor who has created beautiful works of art, all with a Christian theme. And we’re going to be doing it zoom because he’s going to be in essentially his art display area and looking at images, many of them biblical people and concepts, and you will see and hear what it means. But this guy is also in the real estate business. He’s a very successful entrepreneur, and he’s going to combine not only what it is to be an artist, to finish strong, how he sees finishing strong in business as well. As, you know, we’ve had a wide variety. We had someone that was in his 30s who was able to escape Ukraine as a Russian passport holder, and God allowed him to get through all the checkpoints where many of those people that tried were killed.
Ken Larson
And his view finishing strong was amazing. And some of these you can go back and watch the we had a female physician, an internist, that in the height of COVID the pressure to go along with what the medical people experts were saying was true. She was varying some of her advice to patients and suggesting alternative treatments. And the large medical group came to her and said, you can’t do that. And she said, But I believe it’s appropriate. She ultimately resigned and said, I can’t do something that I don’t believe in. That’s another case of finishing strong in the middle of your career. That took real courage. I wonder, and I’m not trying to make anybody feel bad that might be watching, but this whole COVID thing made some people deny the Hippocratic oath that they took as doctors to always do the right thing for the patient. And we didn’t do that as a country. We did not. So I don’t want to get too political there, but that’s a sample of some of the people that we’ve had and that we’ve used.
Bill English
You know what’s sad? No, go ahead.
Ken Larson
I’m just going to say you can go down the list of those that you can click on and listen to, and hopefully they’ll click on yours too and hear what you had to say.
Bill English
Yeah. I consider myself like the least of Christians in business. I’m just a neophyte, Ken. I’m trying to make my way in the world, so to speak. In many ways, I’m just a teenager, Bill.
Ken Larson
That’s what makes you attractive. And I mean that when people want to be the expert that have all the answers. That’s not who I want to interview. I’m attracted to humility. I’m attracted to people that love other people. And you qualify for that.
Bill English
Well, thank you very much. I’m attracted to the same thing. I about owning a business and what it means to be a business owner or a business leader from the scriptures. But how did it really work in the real world? How does Christian stewardship work when the rubber hits the road? That’s why I do these interviews, is because I want to find out how that works. And I think over time, themes will start to develop out of these interviews and we’ll be able to pass those on to MBA programs and to the Cbmcs and the C Twelve S of the world. And it’s real interesting. I just read an Ink 500 or an Ink article about what’s the characteristic that makes CEOs the most effective. And of course I serve as a CEO, and you did for many years. And I’m running a healthcare company right now. And I was what is it? Okay, so I look in it and you know, what the one thing they found that made CEOs head and shoulders? If you had this one quality above any other quality, what was it that made you effective? And it was reliable, dependability.
Bill English
People could count on you to be consistent day in, day out, week in, week out, month in, month out. They knew what to expect. And I’m looking at that and I’m going, well, I’m not always reliable. I don’t always answer my emails in a timely fashion. I don’t always answer my voicemails. Well, sometimes I can kind of be a moving target with. My staff, but reliable, dependability. Anyways, I’m off on a tangent here, Ken, I’m sorry.
Ken Larson
No, you’re identifying something though. Can I link that to something else just while we’re oh, sure. Before you move away from that.
Bill English
Yeah.
Ken Larson
I see. One of the challenges of being a CEO, that is I believe they are responsible to make sure that there is a healthy culture within the organization. And I believe that’s part of the reliability that you’re referring to. And just to take a step back, I’m convinced that the CEO must model embracing and following the mission of the entity that they’re the CEO of. And if they show up and they’re not comfortable with the mission, I think they have to either negotiate the ability to change it or not take the position.
Bill English
Yeah.
Ken Larson
The second part of that is there should be a set of core values that they can embrace and live out. And again, that’s the dependability that I think you’re referring to. Would it make sense for me to share our core values that I try to live by?
Bill English
And we at Slumberland? Yeah.
Ken Larson
Okay. We had five, and one was honesty and integrity in all things. And Bill, without trying to say that that’s the same as or part of the dependability piece that you were talking about. People that live with integrity in all things are dependable. People that live with that kind of commitment will be known as that. That’s not a negotiable thing. I always cringe when I hear something like I’m trying to be a man of integrity. I know, but I’ve heard it and I get really nervous. You either are or you’re not and there’s not much room between you are or you’re not.
Bill English
And you can really only get there by Christ transforming you from the inside out.
Ken Larson
Yes, and I made a mistake, so forgive me for that. I tried to write a set of biblical core values without using Christian jargon because we have people of all kinds. When you get to hundreds or 1000 number of people, you’re not going to have a group of people that all have the same orientation to life.
Bill English
Oh yeah, for sure.
Ken Larson
And so I chose not to use Christian jargon, but honesty, integrity in everything, that’s a biblical value. It is, yeah, we’re supposed to do that. The second one is we want to treat everyone with love, dignity and respect. And the everyone is are the other associates that we work with, the customers that we have and the people that serve us. And frankly, Bill, I have been part of and have observed ministries and people in ministry that don’t do that. It’s an ego issue and it’s sad, but people that are believers end up with reputations when they don’t do that that they shouldn’t have. We should not be known as people that don’t treat people with love. And I use the word in the mission statement love, dignity and respect. Most people in life are not treated that way. I became convinced, listening to people that would talk candidly about their life, that they didn’t experience it at home, they did at work. Now, isn’t that an interesting twist?
Bill English
I was just thinking, as you were going over that Ken, that there’s two areas where we don’t see this played out, and one is in the home. Like you just mentioned, I’m a high school basketball official. I can tell you that I go to these Christian schools sometimes and officiate these JV and varsity games, and this Love, dignity, and respect thing goes out the window from the coaches and the fans. It’s like once you’re at a sporting event, you can disrespect the official all you want anyways.
Ken Larson
And not only the students and the fans, but how about the parents?
Bill English
Yeah.
Ken Larson
They do not display or become good models of how you treat people like you.
Bill English
Sure. Yeah.
Ken Larson
So again, I think that describes those three words, how Jesus treated everybody. Everybody. He was always treating people with love, dignity, and respect. So I believe that’s a biblical mandate.
Bill English
It is.
Ken Larson
Item three is a spirit of excellence and doing work the right way with excellence the first time you do it. Why shouldn’t we be examples as followers of Jesus of excellence? I believe that’s also a biblical value. The third one was these are code words for sharing our resources. But our third one was we want to give to worthy causes and both with money and resources. And so we encouraged people to be part of showing up at the Union Gospel Mission and serving meals, doing Meals on Wheels, seniors and so forth on the clock if it needed to be. But giving is very important and we wanted to share that. And the last core value, that last one of giving is obviously a biblical value.
Bill English
Yes.
Ken Larson
And the last one was a spirit of earning a profit on the investment that’s been made so that we can provide security for our people, our employees. And what’s interesting about that, ultimately, we have been doing this for a number of years. And I thought, you know, I think the priority that I have is right. And I didn’t realize it at the time, but I believe if you forced rank those five of honesty and integrity, treating people well, excellence, giving and profit, wouldn’t it be interesting to put profit as the least important important of the core values?
Bill English
It would.
Ken Larson
You may want to, but without profits.
Bill English
You can’t do the other four.
Ken Larson
You can’t do anything. However, I believe if you work with excellence and you are a group of people with honesty and integrity and you treat people well, that kind of organization is generally going to do just fine.
Bill English
Yeah.
Ken Larson
What I don’t like is when the profit is the first and highest. And Bill, I have seen mission statements that say we exist to earn a return on investment for our shareholders.
Bill English
What’s that movie? Greed is good. Something like that. Is that Gordon Gecko or I forget the characters. And profits are a good thing. They’re a social good. They’re spiritual good. All ministry is funded by profitable business. Ultimately, all ministry is funded by profitable business. But you’re right, if you get the other four, well, the profits will come. And the philanthropy. You can’t do philanthropy without profits either. Well, we just got a few minutes left here. Ken, I’m going to ask you kind of be a little bit introspective here. This is the last question that you and I kind of looked at together in our interview prep time. Looking back, because you’re in, I’m going to say you’re early to mid seventy s right now. And you don’t have to tell me, all right, how old you are. But looking back, what advice would you give to Ken Larson when he was 40 years old?
Ken Larson
Maybe the list doesn’t maybe the list is too long to try to give.
Bill English
You more than just pick one or two.
Ken Larson
All right, I will make one. And this is going to sound like a contradiction to what I just said with core values. So I’ll need to explain it a little bit. I believe as I embraced those core values, I believe I got trapped at times by recognizing as we’d hire someone new or as we gave a person more responsibility, I became comfortable that they weren’t doing it well. And I tried very hard to help. I tried very hard to help them improve. I tried very hard. Most of the time, I waited too long to make a change. I think we know quicker rather than later if someone’s not doing well. And here’s the point that I really want to make. I believe we do the person a service and are showing them respect and love by getting them out of a position that they’re not doing well and moving them on. It’s counterintuitive. It is. But I believe we help the person and we help the organization. We should not be known as an organization or a ministry that allows poor work or substandard management or leadership to go unnoticed and uncorrected.
Bill English
I’m going to say it was over ten years ago now, maybe 15. I read a book called Fire. Someone today? That’s the title of the book.
Ken Larson
I read that book.
Bill English
Have you? The one takeaway I had from that book was that the first time you think that maybe this person needs to be fired is when you need to let them go? And look, I’m like you. I am long suffering now with certain people when it comes to performance. If it’s ethics, I have been known to fire somebody within ten minutes over something that’s unethical. I don’t have a problem with that. But if it’s performance, I want to coach them. I want to bring them along. I want them to be all that they can be because that’s genuinely what’s in my heart. But yeah, sometimes we do hang on to people too long. You’re right. Well, we have been talking today with Ken Larson, who is the founder of Slumberland Furniture, and right now his passion is finishing strong. Finish well or finish well? Finish strong. It’s a ministry that he is holding on a monthly basis through Rockpoint Church in Lake Elmo, Minnesota. You can learn more about his ministry just by going to this urlrockpoint churchleadership. And I’m hoping that we just lost Ken anyway, his phone’s going off, so I just want to point you to his ministry and ask that you would take a look at it.
Bill English
If you are even in your twenty s or thirty s, some of the decisions that you’re going to make in life will affect how well you finish at the end. And whether the end is in your forty s or your seventy s or your 80s, finishing strong and finishing well is really a big deal. I’d also invite you to head over to Bibleandbusiness.com and take a look at a couple of books that I’ve published. I have a third one coming out here in another couple of months, but Biblical Wisdom for Business Leaders is a book and the Christian Theology of Business Ownership. Both of these you can buy at Amazon or most other online bookstores, either in Kindle paperback or Hardback. I would encourage you to do that. Ken, I want to thank you for joining me today. This has been a treat to have you on air and I have enjoyed getting to know you. You’re a high quality guy and I’m blessed to know you.
Ken Larson
Thank you. I just want to comment to your followers that I have recently read the book you wrote on the Proverbs and it’s outstanding. You present some challenging thoughts and ideas that business people and leaders need to wrestle with, and it’s outstanding. I’ve given more than six or eight copies away and I’m getting excellent comments from all of them. But Bill, thank you for the privilege of doing this. I’m grateful and it’s been fun just to work together today in the last hour been great.
Bill English
Yeah, it has been. So listen as I want to invite you all to join me next, believe it or not, I will be with Kirby Spike, who is a mutual friend of both Ken and I. Kirby spent his career at Three M in St. Paul, Minnesota. And we’re going to talk about how Christians manage themselves when they work for difficult bosses, especially bosses who are maybe ungodly. And you’re a Christian and you need to live out your faith in the workforce. So that’s what Kirby and I are going to talk about next week. And I just want to thank you for joining us today. I’m Bill English, the publisher here at Bible and Business, and I hope that you go out and make it a great day. Take care.
Kathy English
Thank you for joining Ken and Bill today. I hope you found their conversation helpful as you grow in your faith in Jesus Christ. If you’d like to speak with Bill, just email him at bill@bibleandbusiness.com. I know he would enjoy connecting with you and thinking through some of your most difficult situations. Bill and I hope you’ll join us again for another Bible and business profiles in Stewardship podcast. So until then, may God richly bless you as you serve him today. Take care.