Day in the Life with Jack Herschend

Jack Herschend is a behind-the-scenes guy.

The co-owner and former CEO of Herschend Family Entertainment, which owns Silver Dollar City and 17 other properties nationwide, prefers to let his brother, Pete, be the face of the family business.

The duo – Pete with his keen marketing sense and Jack with his head for details – are obviously key to the company’s good fortune. Yet, Jack Herschend describes the success more humbly.

“It was by accident,” Herschend says as he prunes a branch from a young redwood tree at his Gift of Green tree farm north of Branson, where he spends about a quarter of his working time.

The days are slower now for Herschend. This morning, after playing tennis with some fellow Branson businessmen and a stop at home, he heads out to spend a couple of hours at his beloved tree farm. Most of the time is spent pruning dead limbs, a result of the late spring freeze.

“I love the dawn redwoods,” he says while wading through a row of potted trees.

The tree farm supports Herschend’s Gift of Green program started in 1992 with a goal of planting and giving away 1 million trees. To date, the program has donated 200,000 trees to nonprofit agencies for on-site plantings or to sell as fundraisers.

Gift of Green farm harvests 6,000 trees a year. An annual highlight is the October “straw party,” where volunteers come out to lay straw over the potted trees to prevent freezing.

“We’ll raise a lot of money for charity, and we have a lot of fun,” Herschend says as he shades the sun out of his eyes. “Plus, it keeps me out of people’s hair.”

A large portion of Herschend’s time is devoted to the community. He spends about half of his time working with charities, including Lives Under Construction Boys Ranch in Lampe and the National Institute of Marriage in Branson, as well as Kids Across America, which takes kids out of the inner city and exposes them to rural America.

Today, he meets with a group from the Reeds Spring Founder’s Day Committee, which picked up a donated tree to be planted at their Founder’s Day Celebration. “Just another miserable day in the Ozarks,” he says with a laugh as the truck pulls up.

Later in the day, he meets with leaders from Lives Under Construction, a residential treatment facility for at-risk boys for which he serves as board member, about a Gift of Green fundraising sale.

Despite his pseudo-retirement, the remaining half of Herschend’s time is spent on the family business, where he works, as he says, “carefully staying out of the way of today’s leadership.”

Development of key personnel such as Joel Manby, who succeeded Herschend as CEO after his 2003 retirement, and Brad Thomas, general manager of Silver Dollar City, has allowed Herschend to stay behind the scenes.

Herschend’s trust in the leadership team allows him to spend time doing what he enjoys most at the company: telling the employees what a good job they’re doing.

After leaving the tree farm he drives to his office – an unassuming section of a strip center just down the road at 100 Corporate Place – to have lunch at his desk and catch up on his cherished note writing.

“My job is to find people who are doing things right and let them know, either in person or by writing notes,” he says while sitting behind his desk, surrounded by pictures of his wife, his three sons and their wives, and his 11 grandchildren. “It’s been a pleasant surprise to me to find out how people treasure those notes; it’s something that takes six minutes to write, and you go to employees’ homes and find them framed on the wall. That’s the biggest, best job I have.”

Despite the company changes, including the addition of a dual headquarters in Atlanta, Herschend’s always aware of where he’s been. That’s one reason why – later in the afternoon – he sits down with KRZK radio host Steve Willoughby, who’s doing a story about the history of Silver Dollar City and the park’s impact on the area.

The success of Herschend Family Entertainment, which most recently added Wild Adventures in Valdosta, Ga., via a $34.5 million purchase at public auction, is the result of years of hard work and, as Herschend says, realized opportunities.

A prime example: Dixie Stampede, the company’s rodeo dinner show in Branson. The idea for the show started, oddly enough, as an indoor water skiing show. That changed when the partner who presented the idea realized the building was too small – six weeks before the scheduled opening.

“We scrambled, trying to figure out what the heck to do with this big building,” Herschend recalls. “That’s how Dixie Stampede was born. It wasn’t part of a long-range success plan, but it’s been enormously successful.”

But reminiscing doesn’t mean Herschend has stopped thinking big; he was part of the team that flew down to Georgia in March 2006 to inspect Wild Adventures before making the decision to bid on it.

Overall, he’s content with where he is and his role with the organization.

“I plan to continue being a consultant any time the CEO needs me, for as long as he asks,” Herschend says. “It’s a neat role in that I don’t push myself on (Manby) – I don’t do anything unless he gives me a call.”

The Day

7:30 a.m. Plays tennis with a group of Branson businesspeople, including financial planner Dennis Newkirk and former Ride the Ducks owner Bob McDowell. Herschend says he’s been combining exercise and meeting time for years.

10 a.m. Heads to his tree farm to do some watering and pruning. The farm is part of the Gift of Green program, which has already donated nearly 200,000 trees toward its goal of 1 million.

11:15 a.m. Members of the Reeds Spring Founder’s Day Committee pick up a donated tree to be planted at their Founder’s Day Celebration.

Noon Heads back to his office to eat lunch at his desk while catching up on mail, e-mail and phone messages. He also reviews corporate business reports and provides input on various projects throughout the company’s 18 properties.

2 p.m. Meets with leaders from Lives Under Construction, a residential treatment facility for at-risk boys for which he serves on the board of directors, about a Gift of Green tree sale.

4 p.m. Meets with Branson radio personality Steve Willoughby for a story on the history of Silver Dollar City.

5:30 p.m. Heads home to spend time with his family. Herschend says his most cherished time is with his family, including his 11 grandchildren. “That’s the life of Jack today,” Herschend adds, “but tomorrow will be different. That’s what I love about it.”

The Q&A

How did your family settle in southwest Missouri?

“My stepdad (Hugo) wanted desperately for his sons to be in his business. He’d been a vacuum cleaner salesman in Denmark. He was a very creative guy; to know Pete now is to know his dad: very creative, very extroverted. Hugo and Mary came down to this area from Chicago in (the late 1940s) because they loved wildflowers. … They fell in love with … Marble Cave and the 640 acres around it … so we entered into a long-term lease. He was right – he got his sons hooked on his business.”

How has Branson changed since your arrival in the early 1950s?

“When we came here, there was nothing here. There was no electricity; we had to haul water in from the spring by truck, and we went eight years without a telephone. But within a few years, here came Table Rock Lake and the publicity that came with that. Then came Shepherd of the Hills, and the Baldknobbers and the Presleys. If we had arrived four years earlier, we’d be back on (Lake Michigan’s) north shore selling vacuums.”

Where does your love of nature stem from?

“My mother – she loved trees, and she fired me a couple of times because I cut trees (while building Silver Dollar City) that she didn’t think should be taken.”

Did you originally plan to take Herschend Family Entertainment national?

“Absolutely not. I’d love to say that we were that smart, but it just evolved. We got in business at Dollywood, in Pigeon Forge, (Tenn.), because of the energy crisis in 1973. We said, ‘This country in southwest Missouri is really remote. After you leave Springfield, it’s 175 miles to Little Rock, 200 miles to St. Louis. If we’ve got gas rationing, people aren’t going to be able to get to us.’ We started hunting for places where there was a big population and we might do better. I hate to say it, but we’ve really been more reactionary than visionary.”

What motivates you?

“Early on in my career, it was fear. My biological dad was an alcoholic and he died that way, and I was fearful of that – that I wouldn’t be able to provide for a family. Fear is a great motivator.

“The thing I get the biggest kick out of now is providing year-round jobs for people. We trained people who worked with us in the tourism business to be cement-block makers or basket makers, to build inventory in the winter. I love providing year-round jobs for people whenever we can.”

What’s the key to business success?

“Building a culture that allows people to fail without losing their jobs is key. We have made some enormous mistakes, but our culture is not to look for blame, but to say, ‘What can we learn from that?’”

Where do your ideas come from?

“Good ideas come from two sources. One is having the discipline to take a couple of days a month and do nothing but think. It’s very difficult, but it’s extremely important. Equally important is the group-think, where people get together and identify an opportunity or a problem and figure out how to tackle it. … Doing (A Silver Dollar City) Christmas, for example, was Pete’s idea. We went out in the marketplace, and we asked a couple hundred mothers, ‘What would you think of a Silver Dollar City Christmas?’ They said, ‘We’d love it, and we’re not coming. You have these windy roads, and we’d slipped off an icy road and never be seen again.’ So for about 15 years the idea languished. Then our general manager at the time said, ‘I have a $50,000 limit before I have to ask Jack and Pete for permission, so I’m going to buy $50,000 worth of lights.’ It was an enormous success. The biggest days of our year now are in November and December, when we used to be closed.”

What’s your biggest business mistake?

“While we were worrying about energy in the 1970s, we came up with the idea of water parks. We built the first one here, and the second in Oklahoma City, and then we went to Dallas. The big reason that we failed was that we weren’t bold enough – we didn’t build it big enough. A competitor came in, built one twice the size of ours, and really taught us a very expensive lesson. That was one I should have been able to catch. It was mainly a mistake of underestimating the size of the opportunity. When we built our property, we invited people to come compete with us, and they did.”

Where does a theme park owner go on vacation?

“You can imagine what happens when I tell my wife that I really need to go to Disney World – to collect ideas for Silver Dollar City. She says, ‘Sure, you’re going to work.’ Then I call back in the evenings and say, ‘Honey, I had a really tough day.’

“But for vacation, I love it at home. We travel – we’ve spent Christmas in the Cayman Islands with seven grandchildren diving, and I enjoy that. But to say it’s to get away from everything isn’t true – I don’t need to get away.”

Do you hear rumors about Disney coming to Branson, and how do you react?

“I think those may be Realtor-driven. That’s just my guess – I don’t know for sure. It seems to happen every four or five years, and it always names a community: ‘They’re going into Branson,’ or ‘They’re going in north of Springfield.’ I just know that for at least 25 years, I’ve been hearing that Disney is coming to the Ozarks. I’ve learned to discount it.”[[In-content Ad]]