The Duck Commander Family (28 page)

15

T
WO ARE BETTER THAN ONE, BECAUSE THEY HAVE A GOOD RETURN FOR THEIR LABOR
: I
F EITHER OF THEM FALLS DOWN, ONE CAN HELP THE OTHER UP
. B
UT PITY ANYONE WHO FALLS AND HAS NO ONE TO HELP THEM UP.
A
LSO, IF TWO LIE DOWN TOGETHER, THEY WILL KEEP WARM.
B
UT HOW CAN ONE KEEP WARM ALONE
? T
HOUGH ONE MAY BE OVERPOWERED, TWO CAN DEFEND THEMSELVES.
A
CORD OF THREE STRANDS IS NOT QUICKLY BROKEN
.

—E
CCLESIASTES
4:9–12

S
omeone once said to Korie that as the CEO of Duck Commander, I’m not accountable to anyone. But in reality, I’m accountable to everyone. If the company doesn’t make it, then we’re all out of work. And since most of our employees are also our relatives and friends, it’s a heck of a lot of pressure to carry every day. I know the decisions I make affect everyone in my family, from Phil and Kay to Alan, Jase, and Jep and their families, as well as Korie and our children. Phil and Kay trust me to do the job because they know I recognize the burden and know I take the responsibility of running the family business very seriously.

It means a lot to me that my dad started this whole thing.
Phil launched Duck Commander and poured his heart and soul into it. It’s his life’s work. But I also think he would have never gotten the credit and recognition he deserved if we hadn’t taken Duck Commander to another level. Changes had to be made, or Duck Commander would have suffered the same fate as a lot of other duck-call companies. Many of the guys who started out in the hunting industry when Phil launched Duck Commander in 1973 aren’t around anymore. Several of them went through the same cycle: a father with a love for the outdoors starts a company, it has some success in the beginning, but if the next generation doesn’t pick up the torch, and they just dwindle back down to where they first started, with a couple of guys making duck calls, or they fade away altogether. They still go to hunting shows, set up a little table, and sell their goods, but they haven’t reached the success or had the longevity Duck Commander has. Now, there is certainly nothing wrong with setting up a table and selling your wares. In fact it reminds me of the old days for us. We were not big back then, but we had some good times at those hunting festivals.

When Korie and I took over the company, Phil told us that Duck Commander had begun to slide after its peak a few years earlier. Walmart sales were starting to go away and there was not a whole lot of traction in other stores, either. Buyers were starting to go to “full line” companies, which could sell them not only duck calls but also many other calls. It was harder and harder for companies who sold only one product to even get a sales meeting. Phil wasn’t panicked or upset, he
just felt that it was the life cycle of business and was proud of what he had accomplished up to that point. Duck Commander would have ended up being a very small business, probably only employing Phil, Kay, Jase, and Missy and maybe one other person, like it did in the early days. The ideas were getting fewer and fewer, the market was changing, Kay was stressed out, and Phil and Kay were just weary. I think Korie and I came at the right time and brought a lot of energy and excitement because we were young and had an entirely fresh look at it. Once the ball started rolling, other people became energized and the excitement was kind of contagious.

Every one of our employees at Duck Commander had an integral role in getting the company to where it is today. As I told you earlier, I’m a big baseball fan and Duck Commander is like a team. You have your flashier players, but you still need your utility men and middle relievers. You see people like Jase and Si on
Duck Dynasty
every week, but there are a lot of people doing really important jobs behind the scenes to make Duck Commander work.

When I took over, I was able to watch what was going on from afar and make some big changes, some that were popular and some that weren’t. I had to fire some people and hired some people that others didn’t think we needed. Everybody wanted to make more money than they were getting, and they thought they were probably going to get even less because we were bringing in additional people. One of the first hires I made that proved to be a really good one was Becky McDaniel, our accountant. After looking at Duck Commander’s financial
books, I realized Kay was spending about $35,000 a year on late fees, penalties, and finance charges. It wasn’t Kay’s fault; she was only trying to keep the company open when it was stretched to the max. Kay was doing the best she could and was simply overwhelmed. But in the end, hiring Becky was worth eliminating the monthly late fees and finance charges we’d been paying for so long. Becky has become an integral part of Duck Commander, doing much more than just accounting. She knows every part of the business and I can trust her to keep things rolling while Korie and I start new projects like making television shows.

Of course, it’s never easy when you’re related to most of your employees. You saw on the show what happened when I tried to put the guys through team-building exercises. They don’t always listen to what I say or do what I want, but it’s a lot more fun working with the people you care about the most. It also has its challenges. Like Uncle Si says, it’s never a good family reunion when you start firing relatives.

My brother Jase is Phil’s right-hand man in the blind and mine at Duck Commander. He went to seminary after high school, then worked for the church for a little while, but essentially came straight to work at Duck Commander. He loves ducks as much as Phil does and is the expert when it comes to duck calls. He takes what he does very seriously. He studies ducks and knows how to imitate their exact sounds. He doesn’t settle for Duck Commander
calls sounding okay. He wants them to be perfect. He’ll spend the same amount of time tuning a call for a beginner duck caller who doesn’t know what he’s doing as he will for an expert caller who has been hunting for years. Making duck calls is one of his passions, and he just loves doing it. I think he especially likes the camaraderie of all the guys sitting around blowing a little smoke between blowing the duck calls. He doesn’t like the stress of things changing and being different. Sitting in a chair and doing the same thing every day would drive me absolutely crazy, but I think that’s part of what Jase likes about his work.

Korie:
Jase lives right across the street from us, and he and his wife, Missy, have three kids: Reed, Cole, and Mia. Jase and Missy like to joke that our oldest son, John Luke, is like Kramer from
Seinfeld
. On nights when we’re not cooking at our house, John Luke busts through their front door as soon as he sees the dining room light go on to join them for dinner. He seems to know exactly when Missy pulls the rolls out of the oven. Our baby girl, Bella, and their daughter, Mia, are great friends. We say Mia is like the ghost of our house. She appears in our house at all times. You’ll turn around in your recliner, and she’ll be standing there. As soon as we pull in the driveway, she’s in our house, waiting to play with Bella. Our entire neighborhood is actually family. My parents are next door, along with four aunts and uncles and two grandparents. That’s the absolute best thing about where we live. It’s all about family.

I’m really proud of my youngest brother, Jep, who has grown up and become a good man. Jep was always like a little tree in a big forest. He was the youngest Robertson son, and his older brothers never lacked confidence. And of course, Phil was bigger than life, so Jep always kind of grew up in our shadows. Jep came along at a different time, too. When he was born, my mom and dad finally had a little bit of money. You know how poor people are when they get their hands on money. Everything had to be the nicest and the best for Jep, so he had a much different experience growing up than the rest of us. He didn’t have to work like we did when we were younger, and I think a lot of things were handed to him. I think Jep probably needed more guidance and didn’t get it. He ended up a little wayward and was kind of just hanging around.

When I took over Duck Commander, Jep was working at the company but wasn’t really super ambitious and wasn’t sure what he wanted to do with his life. Jep was my brother, so I was going to give him some breaks for sure, but I wasn’t going to let him keep making the same mistakes and keep getting away with what he was doing. He was coming to work whenever he felt like it. I remember one time Jep was gone for like a month. Everybody thought that maybe he was out of town, but nobody knew for sure. I called Jep into my office when he finally came back to the warehouse. He was my brother, so I knew I couldn’t fire him. But I couldn’t allow Jep to keep making the same mistakes because it wasn’t fair to our other employees and was bad for morale.

“Let me tell you something,” I told him. “I ain’t going to fire you. But what I am going to do is put a time clock in here. You’re going to clock in and clock out every day. You’re going to start out at your full salary. But if your time slip goes down, you’re going to get less money. I’m not going to fire you, but if you’re only making a thousand dollars per year, you’re going to want to go work someplace else.”

After a few months, Jep decided he wanted to go to work on the offshore oil rigs because he wanted to make more money. I thought it was maybe what Jep needed to do because he’d never worked anyplace other than Duck Commander. I thought maybe Jep needed to go find out what it was like to have a boss who wasn’t part of his family.

“Hey, do what you’ve got to do, brother,” I told him.

But the next day, I called Jep back into my office. “You’ve got to do what you’ve got to do,” I told him again. “But let me tell you this: you’re a stupid idiot if you leave this company. I’m fixin’ to turn this thing around and you won’t be here. You’re going to miss out. Phil has four boys, and your last name is Robertson. There’s an advantage you have in life just because you’re Phil Robertson’s son. You can take advantage of that working here, or you can go work in an oil field. They don’t care what your last name is out there. You’re going to lose every advantage you have in life and what Dad built for you. You’re going to go trade it all for something like that?” I knew that if the dreams I had for our company came to fruition, I wanted Jep to be a part of it, and I couldn’t just let him give it all up without saying something.

Fortunately, Jep didn’t leave the company. We just had to find out what his talents were and take advantage of them. For a while, Jep decided that to make extra money he was going to start doing sales calls. I handed Jep a list of clients and told him to knock himself out. After two or three days, he came back into my office and said sales wasn’t his cup of tea. But we found his gift. Jep has turned into an excellent cameraman. He shoots our Duckmen videos and does a lot of editing. Phil brags about how no one can capture ducks like Jep does. You have to be a hunter to do it, and Jep knows exactly how ducks fly and where he needs to be at all times to capture them on film. Plus, Jep isn’t as outgoing as Jase and me, so he works well behind a camera. He loves to hunt but doesn’t mind being a guy who sits and watches the action, and that’s something Jase and I could never do.