Happy, Happy, Happy (25 page)

I took Jase hunting for the first time when he was five. He was shooting Pa’s heavy Belgium-made Browning twelve-gauge
shotgun, which he could barely even hold up. It kicked like a mule! The first time Jase shot the gun, it kicked him to the back of the blind and flipped him over a bench.

“Did I get him?” Jase asked.

I knew right then that I had another hunter in the family, and Jase is still the most skilled hunter of all my boys. I trained Jase to take over the company by teaching him the nuances of duck calls and fowl hunting, and he is still the person in charge of making sure every duck call sounds like a duck. Not only did Jase design the first gadwall drake call to hit the market, he also invented the first triple-reed duck caller. Jase and I live to hunt ducks. We track ducks during the season through a nationwide network of hunters, asking how many ducks are in their areas and what movements are expected. Then we check conditions of wind and weather fronts that might influence duck movement. We talk it all over during the day and again each morning, before the day’s hunt, as we prepare to leave for the blind.

When Kay and I began to ponder becoming less active in the Duck Commander business, we offered its management to Jase, who had been most deeply involved in the company. But he had no desire to get into management. Jase likes building duck calls and doesn’t really enjoy the business aspects of the company, like making sales calls or dealing with clients and sponsors. Like me, Jase is most comfortable when he’s in a duck blind and doesn’t
care for the details that come with running a company. Jase only wants to build duck calls, shoot ducks, and spend time with his family (he and his wife, Missy, have three kids).

So then we offered the company’s management to Willie, who seemed to have the most business sense among our sons. I knew from the time Willie was only a little boy that he could sell beachfront property in Iowa if he put his mind to it. When I was a commercial fisherman, Willie sold fish on the side of the road with Kay or me. Willie can still quote some of the sales pitches: “Yes, sir, these are golden buffalo, the pride of the Ouachita River.” Willie was even selling carp, a worthless fish you couldn’t sell at the fish market, but he was able to unload quite a few of them with his salesmanship and charm. Willie always said if you can sell fish, you can sell anything. He sold candy from his locker while he was in elementary school and sold worms from an old wooden boat on our river dock. The boy always knew how to make a dollar.

Willie attended college at Harding University in Searcy, Arkansas, and then finished up at Louisiana-Monroe. He gained some management experience from working at Camp Ch-Yo-Ca, a Christian youth summer camp, where he met his wife, Korie, whose family owned the camp. They were married shortly after Korie left for college and now have four children.

Willie, at age thirty, agreed to take over Duck Commander.
For the first few months, he cleaned the yard around my house and did other odd jobs while he learned the business. Before too long, Willie convinced me he was capable of doing a lot more. He became involved in the business side of the company, expanding our Internet operations (Korie’s dad, Johnny Howard, was selling our merchandise through a catalog and online before she and Willie bought the operation) while also landing us new sponsors and endorsement deals. Willie also landed the company its TV deals with Outdoor Channel and then A&E, which really put Duck Commander in the fast lane.

In 2005, Kay and I sold majority interest of Duck Commander to Korie and Willie, and Willie became the company’s CEO. I have to admit he took Duck Commander way past anything I could have done with it. They purchased a thirty-thousand-square-foot warehouse in West Monroe, which was previously the storage space of Howard Books, which Korie’s family also owned. They moved Duck Commander’s operations from my house to the warehouse. They also simplified and computerized the company’s bookkeeping and accounting, which Kay had handled for years, and made it more efficient.

Willie also gets credit for making flowing, untrimmed beards the standard appearance for Duck Commander employees. In a lot of ways, he became the new face of the company. I couldn’t be prouder of him. He’s taken the company where I never thought
it could go. He’s a great businessman, and he’s a heck of a hard worker. He’s a visionary, and he had a vision for what Duck Commander could be. I call him Donald Trump II because he’s a dealmaker and knows how to network in the hunting industry.

With Willie in charge, it was easy for me to walk away from Duck Commander. When Willie and Korie took over the company, I told them, “Y’all take care of the company and send me my check every month. As long as the checks keep coming, I’ll know y’all are doing well. I’ll stay in the woods, and as long as a check comes in the mailbox every month, you won’t hear anything from me.” I don’t go to the Duck Commander warehouse very much anymore. I’m not often up there sticking my nose into their business. A lot of old guys who start businesses and then turn them over to their children want to hang around and can’t let them go. Not me. When I told them to take it over and run with it, I meant it and have left them alone.

Willie also gets credit for making flowing, untrimmed beards the standard appearance for Duck Commander employees.

The thing that has probably pleased me the most about Duck Commander since Willie took over is that it’s still a family business, just like when I started the company. Heck, you basically have to have Robertson blood in your veins to get a job there! Jase, Jep, Willie, and Si are still very involved in the day-to-day
operations of Duck Commander, and now Alan is back in the fold, too. Now all of my boys have come home to where it started.

Through all of our trials and tribulations, Kay and I have realized that raising a family is about love and forgiveness. Our boys weren’t perfect growing up, but they always had an anchor—our faith in Jesus Christ—and that helped us get through our struggles. As it says in Proverbs 22:6 (KJV): “Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old he will not depart from it.” My boys might have strayed from God’s path for them at times, but they always had their faith to fall back on. If you don’t have faith, there’s nowhere to turn. My boys always knew where to go when they ran into trouble.

Rule No. 13 for Living Happy, Happy, Happy

Share God’s Word (It’s What He Asks of You)

F
or the first twenty-eight years of my life, I didn’t know the gospel and I didn’t know Jesus Christ. Now I’m trying to make up for lost time. Jesus said all the authority was given to Him, and He told us to go preach the gospel and make disciples of all the people we baptize. Basically, Jesus is telling me to go forward and share with people what I didn’t know until I was saved. So I’ve been sharing everything I’ve learned since I was converted. Nowadays, I get asked to speak to churches, colleges, hunting clubs, and other groups around the country. The Almighty has put me on the road, but some of my best work still occurs on the Ouachita River right in front of our house.

When I was still a commercial fisherman, I sometimes had over one hundred hoop nets and trotlines stretching all the way
across the Ouachita River. But these pirates on the river kept stealing my fish. Now, people have been shot in Louisiana for taking fish out of someone else’s nets or off their trotlines—which might make sense when you realize someone’s livelihood is being stolen.

When I saw people stealing my fish, I’d run them down with my shotgun and scare the daylights out of them. It didn’t do much good, though, and they kept stealing from me. But I kept scaring them, and I was making enemies up and down the river. People were probably saying, “That ol’ sucker down there is about as mean as a junkyard dog.”

I kept reading and studying my Bible, while the stealing continued unabated. I read Romans 12:17–21, where it says:

Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everyone. If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” says the Lord. On the contrary:

“If your enemy is hungry; feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink.

In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.”

Do not be overcome with evil, but overcome evil with good.

I read the verse and sat there thinking,
There ain’t no way that’s going to work. No way! Be good to them. But, Lord, they’re
stealing from me!
But then I had a revelation:
Hey, wait a minute! I’ve never tried that. I keep running them off with a shotgun
.

It honestly made no sense to me, but I was going to try the Lord’s way. So I decided the next time I saw someone lifting one of my nets, I would initiate the biblical way of dealing with them. I was going to be good to them. Sure enough, I walked out one day and heard a motor running. I looked and saw some guys pulling up one of my nets. I stood there and watched them for a few minutes. My boat was parked right on the riverbank, and I took off running and jumped in it. I had my shotgun with me. I was going to try God’s way, but my faith was still a little weak, so I had my shotgun as insurance! I was going to try to be good to them, but if they wanted to get mean, I was going to have to survive.

It honestly made no sense to me, but I was going to try the Lord’s way.