Preface: “I don’t even like the term ownership. I like the term stewardship.”
— Ernie Hershberger
From the Chicken House to the Met: What Ernie Hershberger’s Journey Can Teach Us About Business and Life
There aren’t many obvious connections between a chicken house and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. One brings to mind work boots, dust, early mornings, and decidedly unglamorous work. The other sits along Fifth Avenue in New York City and houses some of the greatest treasures of human civilization.
Yet somehow, both became part of Ernie Hershberger’s remarkable journey.
Hershberger, an Ohio furniture maker and entrepreneur, got his start in a small furniture store housed in a former chicken house in Mount Hope, Ohio. What began there in 1990 grew into Homestead Furniture and, eventually, the luxury furniture brand Abner Henry. Decades later, that journey would lead to a collaboration with the Metropolitan Museum of Art, creating a collection inspired by works in the museum.
From a chicken house in rural Ohio to the Met in New York City is quite a distance—not simply in miles, but in circumstances.
And perhaps that unlikely journey tells us something important about business: we rarely know where today’s ordinary opportunity may eventually lead.
Hershberger’s story, told in his book Entrusted, is compelling because it isn’t simply a story about becoming successful. It raises a much bigger question:
What are we supposed to do with success once we achieve it?
That is a question worth considering whether you own a small construction company, manage a growing professional firm, operate a farm, or lead an organization with hundreds of employees.
Great Destinations Often Have Ordinary Beginnings
We love stories about entrepreneurs after they become successful. We see the beautiful office, thriving company, impressive customers, or financial success and assume there must have been some grand master plan behind it all.
Usually, there wasn’t.
There were opportunities. Problems that needed solving. Customers who needed serving. Relationships that needed developing. And countless decisions that probably seemed rather ordinary at the time.
No guidance counselor is likely to tell a young entrepreneur, “Start with a chicken house, work hard, remain faithful, and someday this may lead you to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.”
Careers simply don’t work that neatly. Entrepreneurs may love five-year plans; life occasionally seems amused by them. We often understand the significance of an opportunity only when looking backward.
That’s an encouraging thought for anyone building a business today. The customer who seems relatively unimportant might introduce you to your largest customer five years from now. The young employee you’re training might eventually become one of your company’s best leaders. The difficult project you’re struggling through might teach you the skill that creates your next competitive advantage.
Small opportunities have a peculiar habit of becoming important ones.
Excellence Has a Way of Compounding
One of the great lessons of entrepreneurial success is that reputation doesn’t appear overnight. It compounds.
Every time you return a phone call, meet a deadline, correct a mistake, deliver excellent work, or keep a promise when keeping it becomes inconvenient, you make a small deposit into something enormously valuable: trust.
There isn’t a line for trust on the balance sheet. Perhaps there should be.
A company’s equipment can be purchased. Buildings can be financed. Technology can be duplicated. Competitors can copy products and sometimes even recruit employees.
Trust is much harder to reproduce.
It accumulates slowly, through hundreds or thousands of interactions between ordinary people. And that is why some of the smallest decisions in business eventually become some of the most consequential.
Business Is Ultimately About People
Accounting statements make business look wonderfully mathematical.
Revenue minus expenses equals profit. Assets minus liabilities equals equity. Cash comes in. Cash goes out.
The equations are useful. But anyone who has spent much time in business knows there is another story behind the numbers:
People.
Behind revenue are customers who decided to trust you. Behind payroll are employees who chose to invest part of their careers in your organization. Behind accounts payable are vendors who supplied materials or services. Behind equity is capital someone worked to accumulate.
Business may be measured in dollars, but it operates through relationships.
That’s why successful entrepreneurship requires something beyond financial intelligence. It requires learning how to work with people, develop people, serve people, and earn their confidence.
A business owner can have an excellent strategy and still fail because people don’t trust him. Conversely, an entrepreneur with integrity, humility, persistence, and a willingness to learn can travel remarkably far from very ordinary beginnings.
Perhaps even from a chicken house to the Met.
From Ownership to Stewardship
This brings us to what may be the most interesting idea behind Entrusted.
Entrepreneurs naturally think like owners:
My business. My money. My customers. My property. My success.
There is nothing particularly strange about that. Legally and economically, those statements may be perfectly accurate.
But Hershberger’s story invites us to consider another perspective:
What if the things we own are also things we’ve been entrusted to manage?
That single change in perspective can profoundly affect how we approach business.
Consider an entrepreneur with 50 employees. He doesn’t merely have a payroll expense. Fifty people are investing an important portion of their lives in an organization under his leadership.
Consider a business owner who has accumulated substantial wealth. She doesn’t merely have a larger investment account. She now possesses resources capable of creating opportunities, helping people, supporting worthwhile causes, and strengthening future generations.
Success doesn’t decrease responsibility. It increases it.
And at some point, the question may begin to change from “How much can I accumulate?” to “What should I accomplish with what has been placed in my hands?”
Profit and Purpose Don’t Have to Be Enemies
Stewardship is sometimes misunderstood as an argument against ambition, wealth, or business growth. It doesn’t have to be.
A profitable company can accomplish things an unprofitable company simply cannot. Profit allows a business to hire people, increase wages, purchase equipment, develop employees, survive recessions, support communities, reward investors, serve customers, and give generously.
Financial strength creates capacity.
The real question isn’t whether a business should make money. Businesses need profit just as people need oxygen. The better question is what that profit makes possible.
That is where purpose enters the conversation.
Making money can be a worthwhile objective. Building something valuable can be enormously satisfying. But eventually, successful people often discover that accumulation alone is a surprisingly small destination.
There needs to be a why behind the more.
What Has Been Entrusted to You?
Perhaps the distance between a chicken house and the Metropolitan Museum of Art isn’t really measured in miles.
Maybe it’s measured in thousands of ordinary decisions:
Showing up. Keeping your word. Doing excellent work when nobody important seems to be watching. Learning from mistakes. Treating people well. Recognizing opportunities. Remaining humble enough to keep learning.
And being faithful with whatever happens to be in your hands today.
That is what makes Ernie Hershberger’s journey more than an interesting entrepreneurial success story. It leaves the rest of us with a question:
What has been entrusted to you?
Maybe it’s a business. Maybe it’s twenty employees. Maybe it’s a clean slate. Maybe it’s a particular talent, a reputation, a customer relationship, a piece of property, a million dollars, or simply an opportunity that doesn’t look particularly impressive today.
We can’t always know where those opportunities will lead. A chicken house certainly doesn’t look much like the beginning of a journey to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
But that’s the interesting thing about beginnings: they rarely look like destinations.