‘We had a chance to live our lives over again’

One year, however, doesn’t define a self-made billionaire.

Blank, 71, has had far more successes than failures. After picking himself up after one failure, he co-founded Home Depot, which he and Bernie Marcus built into the world’s largest home-improvement company.

Blank also has had an impact on the philanthropic world, pledging to leave 95 percent of his estate to his family foundation. So far, Blank and his foundation have contributed more than $250 million, focusing on early childhood development, education, greenspace and the arts.

Blank serves on several boards, including the board of Cox Enterprises, which owns the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Here, he talks about what he's learned from key people and events in his life.

Q: What early experiences helped shape who you are?

A: I came from a very modest background in Queens. We lived in an apartment. My brother and I shared the one bedroom that we had. My mother and father slept on a pullout bed in the foyer.

My father was a pharmacist who passed away when I was 15. My mother, who had no business background, stepped into his pharmacy business. She maintained it and grew it without any experience.

I learned a lot from that. My mother always had great perseverance. Also, she was always involved in the community, volunteering her time. We didn’t have a lot of means then, so she couldn’t write a big check.

Q: In college, you dealt with an important personal issue. Please discuss.

A: At Babson College, I had to overcome a disorder. I was a stutterer. It was very noticeable at that time.

I was president of my senior class and student government. I was active. I pushed myself through the stuttering issue that would have kept a lot of folks on the sidelines so they didn’t become vulnerable.

That sense of — I’m not going to fail — came from my mother and father. It built my own self-confidence. You work your way through things like stuttering.

Q: Later, you worked your way through something else. After graduating from college and working as an accountant, you eventually became executive vice president of Handy Dan Home Improvement. You got fired along with Bernie Marcus, who was the CEO. What happened?

A: We were running the most successful chain of home-improvement stores in the country at that time. They were large stores with excellent execution.

Bernie got into a political struggle with the chairman and president of the parent company. When we went over (to corporate headquarters) in the fall of 1978 to present our five-year plan and budget, they separated the two of us when we came into the building. We didn’t present anything. They let us go.

Bernie and I then spent six months looking at a variety of opportunities. One of our investors then, who became a co-founder of Home Depot, Ken Langone, said: “You don’t realize you just got kicked in the ass by a golden horseshoe.”

We gathered up some startup money, and in 1978 we launched Home Depot.

Q: Why did you take the risk instead of going to work for another company?

A: We had a chance to live our lives over again. We both felt we didn't want to work for someone else. I was only 37 then. I had every reason to think it was going to work out fine. But if it didn't, I could always get another job and pay the bills.

We had egos and self-confidence. To win big, you have to bet big. What appears to some people as risky, to others it’s not. They believe they can see around corners others can’t.

We asked ourselves what kind of store could we open up that we could not have competed against at a successful operation like Handy Dan was. We said let’s invent something so we could leapfrog the industry in five to seven years. We styled Home Depot as 50 percent bigger, 25 percent less in prices, twice as much inventory and twice as many people on the floor.

Initially, others said, “these guys are crazy. They’re going to go broke. Prices are too low, there’s too much space, too much inventory, too many people on the floor.”

But we knew Home Depot would be successful, that this was the direction the home-improvement business was going to go in.

Q: What was the most important thing you learned at Home Depot?

A: Probably the single most important thing is that culture matters — a lot. The leadership all have to believe in the same kinds of things and back them up. Otherwise, a lot of bad decisions can be made.

It’s not by sending out emails and memos. It’s by living it and constantly reinforcing the core values, including taking care of associates, customers and shareholders.

For us, the first rung of the promotion ladder always started with — does this person believe in the culture, live the culture? If they didn’t, they could not get on the ladder, no matter how good they were at their specific tasks.

Bonus questions

Q: What’s the most important thing you learned from Bernie?

A: There's a lot. If I had to take one thing, it's the sense of urgency, of not being patient. That's not my personality anyway, so I was an easy student.

If you ever walked the store with Bernie, you had to put on roller skates or sneakers to keep up with him. He always was a man to make decisions fairly quickly and move on things.

But change can only be sustained at a certain rate in an organization. If the wheels on a wagon are going down the trail, you can go fast enough so the wheels chatter, but you can’t go so fast that the wheels fall off. Leaders have to have a good sense of how fast and how hard they can push.

Q: How much of what you learned at Home Depot is applicable to the Falcons?

A: When I was buying the team, one of the major lessons I got was from New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft (who made his money in the packaging and entertainment industries). He told me: "You're going to hear that this is a different business. It is in some ways. But if you apply those same values and principles from Home Depot to the Falcons, you will be successful."

It’s different in that players get injured, which doesn’t happen at Home Depot. And the exposure to the media is much, much greater in the NFL. But everything else is really the same. Instead of shoppers in the stores, you have fans. Instead of associates, you have players and coaches.

Q: What did you learn from your experiences with Michael Vick, who was the Falcons quarterback for six seasons before his dog-fighting conviction?

A: I think you have to be close to your players. Some people would argue that I was too close. I would say I wasn't close enough. Our sense of what was going on in his life was not accurate.

We have put more emphasis on understanding the personal character of players since then.

Q: After coming within a game of going to the Super Bowl last year, the team has had a losing record. How are you trying to turn that around?

A: I'm very disappointed. I'm a fan, as well.

This year, we’ve been hit with a lot of injuries and a loss of confidence. I think things develop into a cycle, which we’ll reverse.

You have to have a well-thought-out plan that starts with a candid evaluation of everyone involved — the personnel department, the coaching department and all your players. Who’s performing and who’s not?

From there, you develop a plan to get to a different place. It’s my job to be a catalyst. Most of the work is being done by (the general manager, coach and their staffs).

Q: Forbes estimates your net worth at $1.7 billion, and you’ve pledged 95 percent of your estate to your foundation. Why do you need a hotel-motel tax to help build the new stadium?

A: The success of the franchise shouldn't be dependent on one individual or their estate, but it should be a sustainable organization. A public-private partnership is very important. In this case, 84 percent of the tax is being paid by people who don't live in the state.

The stadium will impact tourism in a positive way. We think the tax is a fair level of public support. At the end of the day, the great majority of the investment is on us.