My Father’s Business
The Small-Town Values That Built Dollar General into a Billion-Dollar Company
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“The story evokes an unlikely comparison with another recent memoir with Kentucky roots, J.D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy…both authors feel the pull of empathy and respect for hardscrabble lives in overlooked places.”
- WSJ
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About the Book
Longtime Dollar General CEO Cal Turner, Jr., shares his extraordinary life as heir to the company founded by his father, Cal Turner, Sr., and his grandfather, a dirt farmer turned Depression-era entrepreneur. Cal's narrative is at its heart a father-son story, from his childhood in Scottsville, Kentucky, where business and family were one, to the triumph of reaching the Fortune 300—at the cost of risking that very father-son relationship.
Chronicling three generations of a successful family with very different leadership styles, Cal Jr. shares a wealth of wisdom from a lifetime on the entrepreneurial front lines. He shows how his grandfather turned a third-grade education into an asset for success. He reveals how his driven father hatched the game-changing dollar price point strategy and why it worked. And he explains how he found his own leadership style when he took his place at the helm—values-based, people-oriented, and pragmatic.
Cal's story provides a riveting look at the family love and drama behind Dollar General's spectacular rise, pays homage to the working-class people whose no-frills needs helped determine its rock-bottom prices, and shares the life and lessons of one of America's most compelling business leaders.