Celebrating Impact and Expansion: ARC Thrift Stores’ Inspiring Journey

SPEAKER 01 : 0:01

Welcome to The Good News with Angie Austin. Now, with The Good News, here’s Angie.

SPEAKER 03 : 0:09

Hello there, friend. Angie Austin here with The Good News, joined by one of our good friends of the show and my personal good friend, Lloyd Lewis, president and CEO of Arc Drift Stores. Welcome back, Lloyd. It’s great to be with you, Angie, on your wonderful program.

SPEAKER 04 : 0:23

I appreciate the invite.

SPEAKER 03 : 0:24

You know, it’s funny because I’ve known you now for close to 25 years and met you when you came in the studio. You’d bought a tour of the Channel 2 morning show studio at a charity event. And you came in with a group and you had your baby son who is now how old is Kennedy?

SPEAKER 04 : 0:42

My baby son is now 22.

SPEAKER 03 : 0:43

Oh, my goodness.

SPEAKER 04 : 0:45

OK, your baby says Harry Potter expert and loves to tell knock knock jokes. And he’s an amazing member of our family. He has Down syndrome and he’s just a great human being.

SPEAKER 03 : 0:55

He is a great human being, very funny, likes to dance, likes to really be the center of attention. He’s not a shy guy.

SPEAKER 04 : 1:00

It’s hard to get him off the dance floor, by the way. He’ll go out. Or the stage. Or the stage. He’s not shy.

SPEAKER 03 : 1:09

No. He likes girls. He likes ladies. So he likes a good dance partner. Oh, he cracks me up.

SPEAKER 04 : 1:15

He will tell you he’s married, but I don’t think the wife knows. Oh, she’s not aware. He will tell you he has two kids. I guarantee the mother doesn’t know. And his kids are his age, he says. So that’s pretty cool.

SPEAKER 03 : 1:28

He’s got two kids the same age. He’s got playmates and children now. Yeah. Okay. I got it. All right. Well, tell everyone what ARC does. I talk about you a lot on the show. And then I want to talk about the recent successes, the cool things.

SPEAKER 04 : 1:43

Yeah. ARC Thrift Stores is a social enterprise, which is literally a business created to fund charity. And our charity that we fund are the ARC chapters of Colorado. There are 15 of those from Fort Collins to Pueblo and on the Western Slope. And they, in turn, help people with developmental disabilities find jobs, housing, medical services, services, and schools. And so I run the funder of those programs, the ARC thrift stores. We now have 38 thrift stores, 37 in Colorado, one in Albuquerque. Our second in Albuquerque will be opened in February or March. Our first in San Antonio will be opened in April. And we are the largest funder of advocacy for people with developmental disabilities. The advocates we find help people find jobs, housing, medical services, services in schools. And we’re also the largest employer of people with developmental disabilities. nearly 600 wonderful employees. And over my tenure, 20 years in, we have now funded, believe it or not, $230 million to advocacy and employment of people with developmental disabilities. And I think a lot of that comes from your donations and your shopping.

SPEAKER 03 : 2:56

Lloyd, the thing that, to be honest with you, yes, my donations fund a lot. But with that said, the number that you just gave me that impresses me the most is There were only a handful of ambassadors who are differently abled, who are dealing with cognitive deficits, like your son, who has Down syndrome. So you have various ambassadors working there. So you had a handful of ambassadors, and now you have over 600. That, to me, is mind-blowing. That’s 600 people who now have a purpose, who have jobs, who have an income, whose parents are no longer as worried about what their children are going to do when the parent passes away. That’s a heavy burden for parents wondering how their child is going to be taken care of. And when they see that they have a place like ARC that not only gives them a job and a purpose, even, you know, it works with their disability, they also provide support. arc university to help them learn various skills and have fun and then you have social gatherings so they have a huge group of friends uh you know and these are kids that may have been isolated in school not had a lot of friends and now they have hundreds of friends when they go to the karaoke events and they go to the zoo together and they meet once a month and learn some new tasks or they work on charity work together and give back i mean that is so cool yeah we had 10 when i started 10 employees with developmental disabilities today as i said we have nearly 600

SPEAKER 04 : 4:15

And they love to contribute. They love to work on teams. They work in all aspects of our company. They might accept donations. They might unload donations. They might sort them, price them in some cases, stock shelves, work keeping the fitting rooms clean, the front ends of our stores clean. Some are cashiers. Some do bagging. We have ambassadors in my accounting department, in my HR department, in my loss prevention department. on our reception desk. They’re just very committed to, you know, their jobs and their relationships with their co-employees.

SPEAKER 03 : 4:53

You know, one of my favorite ambassador friends is Seth, and I read his posts because he’s on social media. And so Seth, I’ve known him probably 13 years or thereabouts, is, I believe now, a head cashier in And he was posting once about the confidence that ARC puts in him and how proud he is to have obtained that position because he is very much a leader and likes to instruct people. And he’s on the spectrum. So he’s very high functioning. And he one day couldn’t get to work or something. And he doesn’t miss work. Like that’s just the ambassadors. A lot of them just don’t miss work. That’s not even an option. They don’t want to miss work. And he had done some crazy route to work that was like six hours in the snow or like a bus here and a thing there. And I just could not believe that anyone.

SPEAKER 04 : 5:44

There could be two feet of snow and they all want to come to work.

SPEAKER 03 : 5:47

Yes, and he still made it. And he explained what he had to do in order to get to work because there was so much snow. It was like as long as you shift. It took as long as you shift just to get there.

SPEAKER 04 : 5:57

Yeah, they are unbelievably dedicated people. They are very inspiring to their fellow employees. They help us with morale in the company. And they just love to contribute. And they’re amazing, amazing employees.

SPEAKER 03 : 6:11

You hit on the other thing I always notice, the morale, that there’s this certain magical presence of the ambassadors and the genuine feelings they have. I remember when you and your wife, Claire, got married and same favorite ambassador friend, Seth, stood up to speak at your wedding, just like the mic was going around or something. He’s like, give me that. I have a few things to say. And he gave such a beautiful welcome to your wife about how she was now part of the family, the Ark family and would be embraced by, you know, the employees and the ambassadors as like an extra mom. And I just thought it was so touching because that, that, that feeling that they bring into the organization of genuine love and concert and care, genuine, is so palpable. I mean, it’s so obvious.

SPEAKER 04 : 6:59

From a business perspective, when you enhance morale, you enhance productivity. Yeah. When you enhance productivity, you enhance revenue. When you enhance revenue, you enhance earnings. So they are wonderful, but they have a big impact on our success as a company. because of their contributions, not just to their jobs, but the overall morale of our company.

SPEAKER 03 : 7:22

Yeah, it’s obvious. I think when I go in, I think it’s obvious. Okay, so here’s another cool thing. Lloyd actually is a very highly, I would say, decorated philanthropist in that he doesn’t just do work on behalf of ARC and that community. He also raises money for a lot of other nonprofits because our thrift stores is so successful in raising money, especially I remember during COVID you did so much. But I was shocked to learn the circle that you travel in from your former business school, you’d won a big award, which you can explain. And so I went on the website to read about the award that you’d received on the Booth Business School, which has always been top three, I think, in the country. I don’t know the world. I mean, it’s up there. And there were these huge mega, I mean, there were billionaires listed next to you, right? And people running massive organizations that, you know, household names we all know. And you’re in that circle receiving awards, but you chose to take the path that wouldn’t make you a billionaire. You chose to take the path that would give all those hundreds of millions back to others. So I found it very interesting because they recognized you for that.

SPEAKER 04 : 8:35

Yeah. First of all, on the decorated thing, my wife would not agree because she does not appreciate, you know, the outfits I select. So she would wonder about that comment.

SPEAKER 03 : 8:48

And also she doesn’t appreciate your interior decorating skills either. I know that.

SPEAKER 04 : 8:52

But secondly, you know, when my son was born – I committed to try to help people like my son, and that became a real mission and purpose of my life. Prior to that, I had done municipal investment banking with Smith Barney. I had been with IBM. I had been a CFO for a high-tech sold to Micron. But when Kennedy was born in 2003, I decided I was going to try to help people like my son. And it’s given my life the meaning that I have in my life and the purpose I have in my life. And I was very honored to receive that award from the University of Chicago, who I thought took great, you know, steps in recognizing the work that ARC does, the people we support, the success we’ve had. You know, it is an interesting award. set of peers because Satya Nadella, the very successful CEO of Microsoft, is a former distinguished alumni winner, as is the current CEO of Starbucks.

SPEAKER 03 : 9:59

Wow.

SPEAKER 04 : 9:59

Before Starbucks ran Chipotle.

SPEAKER 03 : 10:03

Right. And that’s what I’m talking about. You’re traveling in circles with Starbucks CEOs, the former Chipotle CEO that now runs Starbucks. I mean, just the names and the people that when I read that awards page, I was blown away. I mean, what an honor for you.

SPEAKER 04 : 10:16

It’s a great honor, and just one of the great honors that I think I’ve received.

SPEAKER 03 : 10:21

Now, in terms of things coming up, you’ve got – you said you’re getting a store that is going to be opening in Texas. You have one now in New Mexico, so you’re expanding. What else is on the horizon that you have that you might want people to know about?

SPEAKER 04 : 10:34

Well, we have 37 stores in Colorado, and we successfully opened our Glenwood Springs store a month or two ago. It’s doing quite well. And then we’re opening the second Albuquerque store in – in February or March, a first in San Antonio in April. And it becomes a little more difficult to find new stores in Colorado, but as they come to our attention, we’ll be adding stores in Colorado. But with the success we’ve had, we can take our stores and help others in New Mexico and Texas and also employ others with developmental disabilities in those states. It’s something that we’re very excited to be doing.

SPEAKER 03 : 11:13

I think that you provide a really nice model too for other organizations that are maybe tentative or afraid to hire people who are differently abled because they’re not quite sure how to work with them. I don’t know. I know you have a gift with all of your ambassadors, and I don’t want to toot my own horn, but I think I do too. So I see how much they have to offer, but I think some people are intimidated by them and not sure how to work with them, not sure to – because if you work with their abilities and the things that they really shine in – boy, you couldn’t get a better employee. But I think that there’s a fear factor there. So by you showing other organizations how it’s done, I think it’s a big thing. I mean, if more people could come and see, organizations could come and see how your ambassadors work within the company, I think they would be inspired to do the same.

SPEAKER 04 : 12:03

Yeah, I do public speaking, and I talk to other business groups and other company reps about the benefits of hiring people with developmental disabilities. And really, with a few accommodations, they’re great employees. Yeah, a few accommodations. And, you know, I deal with 2,000 employees, and some of the 2,000 can be at times more difficult to work with than the ambassadors. And, you know, in my mind, It’s a smart business thing to do, and it’s a very humane thing to do to do this kind of employment.

SPEAKER 03 : 12:43

Oh, I totally agree. I totally agree. All right, and then I know that there’s a couple of big days when you guys are really busy, and that is Saturdays and also Senior Days Tuesday, correct?

SPEAKER 04 : 12:57

Yeah, on Tuesday Senior Days, seniors 55 and older – can get 50% off of most of the items in the store, everything except for the current color. We have five colors in the store over the course of five weeks. And so they get almost everything is 50 off. Same thing on Saturdays. You don’t have to be a senior. So Saturday is our biggest day, followed by Tuesday. And it’s just a lot of fun to see the crowds that we get. and the fun they have going through the aisles and checking things out and finding things that, you know, they didn’t know they were going to find.

SPEAKER 03 : 13:36

Yeah, and I’ve gone many times. Every year is when we shop there even more when Mark was starting his company, and we had our Christmases where we’d get all the Christmas presents there. And, you know, it’s just such a great place. If you are at a tight budget or not, the sporting equipment is always expensive, and I’ve always gone there for that or whatever. expensive boots for the kids like Ugg boots or North Face jackets if you want a really expensive brand. If you sift through, you can find those expensive brands, believe me. All right, Arc Thrift, Lloyd Lewis, President and CEO, thank you so much. Check out their stores and check out their donations as well. Thank you, Lloyd. Thanks, Angie. Great talking with you. Great talking with you.

SPEAKER 02 : 14:19

There’s a present you wanted and didn’t get, and Arc Thrift might have it. They have aisles and aisles of products, from vintage clothing to furniture and knickknacks to entertainment items like unique records and classic books. Find the hidden gem you’ve been looking for. shopping at arc thrift they now need your donations as long as your items are gently used arc thrift will take them and give them a new home you may have gotten some new clothes and now you need to clear out some room in that dresser or closet just donate it in one of arc thrift’s 38 locations or their 15 donation centers They always need donations, so why not start out the new year with downsizing the items you no longer need? You can find any Arc Thrift store or donation center on their website at arcthrift.com.

SPEAKER 03 : 15:10

Georgetown is tuned to the mighty 670 KLT. Hello there, it’s Angie Austin and Jim Stovall, and we are talking Winner’s Wisdom column today, and I’m happy to report that it’s a happiness column titled The Happiness Habit. Oh, I’m into this one, Jim. Hello. Well, hello. It is great to be with you as always. All right, so I know that you have some of these calls like I have with you that make you happy, and there’s one that you have with a good friend and colleague, and that was where you started off this week with The Happiness Habit.

SPEAKER 05 : 15:48

Yeah, he is actually my financial broker. And he and I, for many years, talk almost every morning. And he is as insane as I am in that he is usually in the office during the 4 a.m. hour. So somewhere between 4 and 5, we usually talk every day for a brief period of time. And he is an amazing individual. He was an All-American football player. He played seven years in the NFL. And He’s not a big guy, so if you saw him, you would wonder how he did that. Well, he has all kinds of injuries and replacements and surgeries and everything. So, you know, he’s always in some kind of pain or recovery or something. So every day I’ll say, man, how are you doing? He’d say, I’m doing great. It’s a choice. Every day it’s a choice. And, you know, that started to impact me. It’s a choice. I mean, every day you can find… Many, many things you want to be happy about or many, many things you want to be sad about. And it’s clearly a choice. And then social media has so filtered our perception of ourselves, and we have a tendency to get a skewed idea. When I was a little kid, Angie, my best friend lived across the street. And We lived in a fairly modest neighborhood of little houses, working class people. Well, when it was time to go to junior high school, the street that he lived across was the dividing line for the two schools. So he went to a school in a working-class, poorer neighborhood, and I was kind of on the very edge of… I went to a school with the country club kids and everybody, the rich kids. And even though he and I both lived in the same neighborhood and we had the same kind of upbringing, well… What transpired is I think in a few months he started feeling really lucky because he and his family had a lot of things that a lot of the kids in his school didn’t have. And I started wondering, wow, how come we don’t have all the things that all these other people have? And what did it to us was not what we had or didn’t have. It’s who you compare yourself to when you start comparing. And this is something that I think we all need to be aware of. You know, and certainly as we do our golden list, our gratitude lists and those sorts of things, you know, we need to be aware of how fortunate we are because I don’t care where you live here in America. You know, 95% of the people on planet Earth today of the 8 billion inhabitants, 95% of them would give everything they got to be your next-door neighbor. That’s how lucky we all are. And we have a tendency to forget that. And, you know, we have to realize happiness is a habit. And like any habit, the more you exercise it, the better it gets.

SPEAKER 03 : 18:44

Yeah, right. Like a muscle. And there’s so many of us, I think, forget that. And I understand that there’s clinical depression and things like that. But oftentimes there’s so many things that are in our power that can help make our circumstances better. And you’ve always told me that. When you’re feeling low, doing something for someone else is a really good way of kind of lifting your spirits. And that can be very effective in many cases when it’s not a clinical or chemical depression per se.

SPEAKER 05 : 19:10

Yeah, and even being happy, having a great attitude, even if you’re clinically depressed, is still a beneficial thing. And I’m not saying it can solve clinical depression. You know my academic backgrounds in psychology and sociology. I mean, there are true problems, but you also have to realize your attitude and how you look at the world really impacts you. When I wrote my book, The Art of Optimism, I wrote about the fact that Being a pessimist is as bad for your health long-term as smoking two packs of cigarettes a day. So I always tell people, if you can’t quit smoking, at least have a good attitude about it because it will impact your health long-term.

SPEAKER 03 : 19:55

You know, one of my girlfriends, I just got off the phone with her. This is last week, and she’s been battling cancer. And she has become friends with her doctor. And they go out to lunch sometimes now, et cetera, which is just like her. She travels a lot internationally by herself for like six and eight weeks at a time. And it’s baffling to me because just me a week last summer in Nashville alone, and I don’t like the time alone like in the room at night. I like having someone to bounce things off of and try ice cream with and talk about things. But she meets new people everywhere she goes. She makes friends. She made friends with some guy in India, just as a sidebar. She was bringing this up last week, and she said, I believe he was a doctor, and he was very proud of all he had. She said, you would think that he lived in a mansion, just like a castle, just like something just spectacular. And she said, and when I got to his home to visit, and that’s how close she got with this couple, this traveling, that they actually invited her to come to India and visit them, and she lives in California. So she gets there and she said, Angie, I had to step over bodies of people sleeping in the hallway to get into his apartment. And he was just as proud as could be of everything he’d accomplished. And she said it just really put it into perspective for me how proud he was of his accomplishments. Whereas from my eyes coming from my country, working for NBC all those years we worked together, she’s got a home that’s paid for. It’s not huge, but she has no financial concerns or whatever. So she’s expecting him to live in a palace. Little did she know that there’d be bodies to walk over in the hallway. Well, her attitude, this woman, because you can tell she can meet people all over the world, she’s bubbly and positive. Anyway, the doctor said, the minute you walked into my office with your diagnosis and I told you you had cancer and that we were going to get started on the process, she goes, I am telling you the majority of the time I can tell how someone is going to fare in terms of their cancer treatment, their chemo, and their recovery. And she said, I just knew you’d do well because of your attitude. And to be honest with you, the minute I heard she had cancer, I thought the same thing. You know, like this woman’s attitude is so amazing. Like I think she’s going to be in the top 1% of people who have the best ability to recover from something like this.

SPEAKER 05 : 22:06

Yeah, I mean, oh, my country called a lot. I talked to the golf pro, and he said, there’s two kinds of people. They’re coming to play the course where the U.S. Open was just played, and they get really nervous. And then he said, and then there’s guys, you know, hey, where’s the first tee, and what’s the course record? I mean, somebody get out of the way. I’m playing. And, you know, and he said, you can tell they’re going to have a lot of fun, and they’re going to play a great round. And, you know, and it’s the difference between, working to win as avoid trying not to lose. And you get real cautious and you get, you know, really you start having difficulty just doing normal things. And, you know, and so just having a good attitude, being happy. You know, I’m having a great day. And, you know, when people ask, how are you doing? I mean, tell them, hey, I’m having a great day. I am. I always tell people I am blessed and highly favored. Well, first of all, I know I am. Second of all, when I hear myself say that 10 times a day, I start believing it myself. And we all are. It’s just a matter of. You can have a great day or you can have a bad day. There’s plenty of reasons to do both, and we all get to decide.

SPEAKER 03 : 23:15

One of my friends in Christian radio would say something to the effect of – I can’t even remember who it was, but I just remember hearing it many times. It says, oh, I am convinced God’s got a favorite, and I am convinced it’s me. Yeah.

SPEAKER 05 : 23:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER 03 : 23:28

Well, when you talk about your grandma’s golden list, we’ve talked about it so many times over the years, the 10 things that you’re thankful for. My kids used to have my mom do it in the car when she was in a really grumpy mood and she would just really snap out of it. And you said that you’re convinced that if you adopt that practice of doing that every day or as much as you can remember to do it. It’s really difficult to have a bad day and that when you were losing your vision, you’d come to complain to your grandma or just to say how hard things are and you’re losing all your dreams. And she would tell you, right, to come back when you’ve done your golden list?

SPEAKER 05 : 24:00

Yeah, and a lot of times you just forget what it was you were having a bad day about. I mean, you know, it’s just, you know, if you just list 10 things you’re thankful for. It’s really, really hard to have a bad day. And, you know, that’s such a wonderful way to start your day. And, you know, it just carries through throughout the day. And I get up early, as we said, and, you know, inside the door to my office, once I leave the bedroom, I come into my office, there’s a frame poster on the wall there, and I can’t see it, but I know what it says. And it says, success is, and then it lists 30 things you have to do to be successful. But number one is marry the right person. So when I come in every day, I touch the frame of that, and I always think to myself, okay, no matter what else happens today, because you married Miss Crystal, or more importantly, because Miss Crystal was willing to marry you, no matter whatever happens today, you got that one right. And, you know, it’s really hard to have a bad day. And then I sit down and I make the rest of my list and do my thing and I go to work. And, wow, it just carries you through the day.

SPEAKER 03 : 25:09

It’s funny because, you know, I’ve talked to Crystal several times over the years, but just recently there was some mix-up with the phones. And every time I was calling her office, they were forwarded to your house or something of a sort. And I – I was hanging up, I guess, before Crystal picked up or it was going to voicemail, and then I was hanging up. That’s it. Yeah, yeah. And then Crystal tried to call me back, but it wouldn’t go through, but she didn’t know who it was because it’s not identified. So finally I get through, and I said, I am so sorry. I’m trying to reach Jim Stovall because I knew it wasn’t your office because Beth answers with Narrative Television Network. This is Beth speaking. And so I knew it wasn’t Beth. And I said, I’m so sorry. I’m trying to reach Jim Stovall. You know, I must have the wrong number. And she was, who is this? I go, oh, I’m sorry. I go, this is Angie Austin. I’m trying to reach Jim Stovall for an interview that we do for the good news. She’s like, oh, Angie. It’s just funny because she’d been harassed by like multiple phone calls.

SPEAKER 05 : 25:59

Yeah, no, she loved you. And, um, And she’s the one that she got some of your pictures off of my email because she was helping me respond to your email. And she said, wow, Angie is a gorgeous lady. And I said, well, I’ll tell her that.

SPEAKER 03 : 26:18

So there you go. That’s sweet. As you get older, your kids, they get all the attention. It’s kind of fun to go with my family. My kids are all really blonde, and I am too. My husband’s got dark hair. He’s tall. But when we’re going on our vacations, it’s like a bunch of ducks following my husband or my son through the crowd, and they’re all so tall, 6’6″, 6’4″, 5’10”, 5’8″, and then me, 5 feet. It’s kind of a funny little – and I know sometimes people look like, wow, that is one short mom for that family. Like every once in a while, I just know people are saying things because six, six and five feet. I mean, right there, that looks a little odd. But then to have all these giant children that are significantly bigger than I am is definitely a bit of a spectacle. And they’re, you know, pretty, you know, good looking kids. So it’s just funny to see the attention that my kids get now because we don’t, you know, we don’t get the same kind of attention we did as we were younger. People turning their heads when you walk into a room. So it’s funny to see them get that kind of attention now. It’s interesting. world.

SPEAKER 05 : 27:20

No, I get it. I get it. I remember when I did a film with Raquel Welch and I went to dinner one night and we walked into the dining room and it just went quiet and everybody’s staring. I can imagine. I said, so, you’re used to having everybody stare at you. She said, well, They know who I am. They’re trying to figure out who you are. That’s the whole thing right now.

SPEAKER 03 : 27:41

Oh, that’s funny. Well, and she’s so statuesque, too. I can imagine that her entire life, even if she got older, she would really stand out. Well, and famous, too, for the majority of generations. I mean, I was younger than she was, and I certainly knew who she was.

SPEAKER 05 : 27:56

Yeah, and I mean, it’s a blessing and it’s a curse. I mean, you know, she had to live up to that her whole life. I mean, you know, I… And, you know, we were done shooting for the movie for the day. And I said, hey, you want to go to dinner now? She said, I need an hour and a half. I said, oh, you got another shot to do or what are you doing? She said, Jim, I have to go get ready. You know, I mean, I just can’t, you know, throw on some sweats and go. I got, you know. You know, she’s got to be what people expect her to be.

SPEAKER 03 : 28:27

Wow, and she took that seriously. I think that would be exhausting. That’s a pretty big commitment to your beauty regimen. All right, jimstovall.com. Thank you so much, friend. Talk to you next week. Thank you.

SPEAKER 01 : 28:39

Thank you for listening to The Good News with Angie Austin on AM670 KLTT.