October 19, 2025 • 39 mins
To honor his passing David replays the interview with Doug , from December 2017. His life story, the creation of Lending Tree and his faith in God!
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Speaker 1 (00:09):
Hi everyone, I'm David Chadwick and this is News Talk
eleven ten ninety nine to three WBT. Welcome to the show.
In case you don't know, this is a faith in
values program that airs every week here on WBT Radio.
It's been a pleasure doing the show now for well
over twenty five years. I've enjoyed it so much. Thank
you Perry's Fine Jewelry for your sponsorship of the show.
Without you, I could not do this on a weekly basis. Well,
(00:31):
I want to use a friendship for the most part
of this show. About eight years ago, Ed Billick and
I interviewed Doug Lebda, the founder of Lending Tree here
in the city of Charlotte, and Doug and I became
good friends over the years, and many of you know
he tragically passed away about a week plus ago in
(00:53):
an ATV accident where he was riding his vehicle in
his Mountain Area farm and flipped over on him and
his head hit a rock I think it was, and
there was trauma to his brain and evidently he died instantaneously.
Well Ed Billick discovered our interview with Doug back in
twenty eighteen, some eight years ago, and so we thought
(01:15):
it would be a great way, in a tribute to him,
to replay that interview. But before we do that, Ed,
we're going to talk just a second about what happened
in the Mideast, because we would be remiss if we
didn't comment on that. I mean, I think President Trump's
accomplishment in bringing about a twenty point piece accord in
that area of the world after two plus years of
(01:36):
enormous conflict is quite a success for him. Would you
agree with that? Well?
Speaker 2 (01:41):
Absolutely, And the release of the hostages really kind of
showcase the whole thing. But gosh, David, as you and
I know, there's a lot of work yet to be done.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
Yeah, you know, after we saw the twenty hostages released,
and my wife, Marilyn has set her alarm every day
at eleven fifty nine am, and when it goes off,
she has for over two years prayed for the release
of those hostages, and she had tears going down her
cheek as she watched the hostages being released. Those of
(02:10):
us who have children, you can only imagine how the
families felt seeing those in captivity for two plus years
coming home, and it looked like most of them were well.
And I celebrate that twenty eight lives that were lost
during the captivity bodies have not yet been released to
the Israelis. There's still that pain among families who are going,
(02:31):
what was my child killed there? Did my child die there?
And so that's still yet to happen, and I pray
that will happen, just for the peace that can only
come with finality and closure for the parents. But then
ed you and I both remarked as we started to
show today the hideous pictures of Gosins who found fellow
(02:53):
Gosins who they think betrayed the Gosen cause, the Hamas cause,
and they brought them into the streets, made them kneel
cameras filming all of this, and they shot them in
the back of their necks because they felt like they
were traders to the Hamas Gaza cause. And I just
can't even begin to understand why someone would do that
(03:15):
right after a peace accord. But it does suggest the
reality that the peace accord is important. It is a
treaty that people are agreeing to. But how do you
change a human heart, That's what's really the question right now.
And there's still Iran out there and other Arabs in
that part of the world who want the complete eradication
(03:37):
of Israel. They don't want a piece of cord. They
want Israel thrown into the heart of the sea from
the river to the sea. That's what that chant means.
They want that area of the world to be given
back to Palestinians. And of course the Israelis still think
it is their homeland guaranteed them by God in a
promise to Abraham back in Genesis twelve thousands of years ago.
(04:00):
So I don't see how this conflict is going to
go away anytime soon, because the real problem is a
problem of hatred in the human heart. And I still
will pray for the peace of Jerusalem, as Psalm one
twenty two, verse six says, I still pray for peace
in the mid East. But I just found it fascinating
(04:20):
that after the peace Accord was signed and President Trump
goes to Egypt and has a victory lap if you will,
and the world is celebrating him, you then have the
execution of these people in the streets of Gaza City,
and it just shows again the reality of hatred and
the human hearts.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
Yeah, who's intended to take over the leadership there? Who's
going to rule the government, and what's that government going
to look like? And there's so many unanswered questions. I'm
sure that's all been thought out, at least I.
Speaker 3 (04:46):
Hope it's well.
Speaker 1 (04:47):
I think they are at least beginning to talk through
what that means. One of the big questions is the
Palestinians want East Jerusalem back under their control. That was
lost in the nineteen sixty seven war. The Israelis were
able to take over East Jerusalem, gave the oversight of
the Temple Mount, where the Alaska Mosque exists, the third
holiest site in all of Islam. But the Jordanians are
(05:10):
allowing more Jews to go up on the Temple Mount.
Right now, there's a lot of talk about the rebuilding
of the Third Temple, the Jew's holiest site that was
lost in seventy a d when the Romans destroyed it,
And how can that happen with the Arabs thinking, no,
that's our third holiest site, We're not going to allow
that temple to be rebuilt, and the Jews wanting that
to happen. East Jerusalem still under technically the control of
(05:32):
the Jews. Would they dare give that up to the Arabs?
I don't think so. That's another source of conflict that
exists in that.
Speaker 3 (05:38):
Area of the world.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
Nowhere do you read that in the media. Our friend here,
David Chadwick, always opens our eyes to the biblical references.
Speaker 1 (05:46):
David Well, I hope I can. And there will be
a third Temple biblically that is rebuilt. We've done shows
on that, and I don't know how to overlook the
fact that that temple will occur and what will that
cause as an international conflagration, don't know, but let's keep
our eyes on that area of the world. Let's keep
praying for it. Now I want to introduce to all
of you my friend Doug Lebda. He's speaking from the
(06:08):
other side of eternity really right now for us. We
did this interview in December of twenty seventeen, some eight
years ago. Doug was a man of great faith, a
man of great ingenuity, a man of great vision, and
really just a good friend to me as well. And
I hope you'll enjoy this interview as it gives you
insights into his entrepreneurial leadership, his ability to take something
(06:30):
that was not in existence in existence and become one
of the largest growing companies in the world called Lending Tree.
Doug Lebda a wonderful man, married to Megan, his family
now grieving over him. The celebration of his life will
be today two thirty at Founder's Hall uptown the Bank
of America. I would invite you to come. I think
(06:51):
Megan would want you to come, if that's what you'd
like to do, and we will celebrate his life now
in this interview, everyone, this is Doug eight years ago.
Speaker 2 (07:30):
The cities, the who just open.
Speaker 3 (07:39):
How everyone?
Speaker 1 (07:40):
I divid Chadwick, welcome back to the show. And as promised,
here is my interview with Doug Lebda, who tragically died
a few days ago, now in heaven, but a wonderful
interview done eight years ago about Doug's life and leadership
and faith. Doug LEBNA, CEO of Lending Tree, my guest
today and we talked about you. You graduated from college.
(08:02):
Where'd you go from there?
Speaker 4 (08:04):
I was an accountant in Pittsburgh for Price Waterhouse for
four years, and during that time I tried to get
up mortgage on a fifty five thousand dollars condominium on
Mount Washington and got basically the run around from the banks.
I looked in the newspaper. I went to the banks
around the corner. I put my tie in, I put
(08:25):
my suit on, and they told me the rate wasn't
for me. It was a condo. You have to get
flood insurance on the top of a mountain, and it
just didn't make sense for me, Thankfully. A year later,
I was doing some consulting work, believe it or not,
in the natural gas industry, and I was watching markets
develop in.
Speaker 3 (08:45):
Very eccentric and.
Speaker 4 (08:47):
Sort of weird areas where you could actually and I said,
where you could trade almost anything. And I said, why
can't consumers actually get full transparency on their loans, be
able to say of money and make banks compete, and
why can't we turn the whole process around?
Speaker 3 (09:03):
So that was after that.
Speaker 4 (09:06):
Tried to tell a couple banks in nineteen ninety five
early nineteen ninety six they had no technology. I went
to the University of Virginia for a year and during
that year developed the business plan for lending Tree, and
then at the end of the year decided to leave
and move to Charlotte, Oh.
Speaker 1 (09:24):
Now UV eight, did you do graduate level work or
were you just working there in Charlotte's.
Speaker 4 (09:29):
Full to figure I was there in business school. Nope,
I was there in business school and left at the
end of the year. I was probably God, what made
me go to this one class? It was a second
year class and I was a first year student, and
it was Jim Collins teaching an entrepreneurship class.
Speaker 1 (09:49):
Oh, the good the great guy.
Speaker 3 (09:51):
Yes, business, Yes.
Speaker 4 (09:53):
And he basically I could recite it here on air
if you wanted to, but I'll save you time. He
basically walk through why you should go create your own
path and not go work for a company.
Speaker 3 (10:07):
And I went down. I went home and.
Speaker 4 (10:10):
I literally wrote out a decision tree, the other thing
I learned in business school, and said, you know what,
let's give it one year. And gave it one year
and moved to Charlotte and set up lending Tree in
my spare in my spare bedroom.
Speaker 1 (10:23):
Okay, so this is really an entrepreneurial startup. You're not
using somebody else's genius. This is your baby from the
very beginning.
Speaker 4 (10:33):
Correct it is, and it isn't because our entire company
is built around empowerment. It's built around and Jim Collins
a lot of those principles, and I think a lot
of those principles are in the.
Speaker 3 (10:46):
Bible that our company is not about me.
Speaker 4 (10:51):
It has to be about everybody else, and it has
to be about ideas coming from the bottom, ideas coming
from everywhere, how you actually make them. I was had
a great conversation a week ago with a good mentor
and professor of mine who's also on our board, and
she said, the goal of the leader is to make
(11:11):
yourself obsolete. And I've struggled with that because who wants
to be obsolete? But at the same time, if you've
got a company with principles and values that you want
to have carry on, it's my job to then empower
other people to make it their own.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
That's an interesting idea of leadership. I can remember back
in the eighties when I began my ministry at Forest Hill,
a church here in Charlotte, that I was taught to
lead from upfront with a kind of an autocratic style.
Top down. People follow. I get the vision. And I've
learned over the last couple of decades, actually going back
to almost when you are teaching these very principles, that
(11:53):
it just doesn't work. Really, You've got to get good
people on board, and you've got to get their ideas
to be part of the overall plan and the vision.
And when you do so, it's everybody together making the
whole organization, the whole church, whatever stronger.
Speaker 4 (12:07):
The absolutely absolutely one of my mentors. I was very
lucky to get to work with Jack Welch for a
two and a half years And what he used to
always say is it's the people at the level below
you that build you up, that give you the chance
to get to the next level, as opposed to your
own genius and doing it for yourself. Now you can
(12:30):
carry that with the always. The other side is the
Dilbert cartoon that says, well, if everybody hires smart people,
the dumbest guy's a CEO.
Speaker 3 (12:39):
But a lot of what.
Speaker 4 (12:42):
You have to do it's all about people, Yeah, and
getting the right people, making sure you have the right
principles making and then making sure the principles track right
down through every level of whether it's compensation, pay, how
you act.
Speaker 3 (12:56):
Who you hire, who you let go, and how motivated.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
And that's culture, isn't it in an organization? And someone
once said that a bad culture will trump a great
vision every single day of the week. So when you've
got a great vision and a great culture, then you've
got success brewing.
Speaker 4 (13:12):
We yes, absolutely, and you have to have. And the
leadership that I've learned is you just try to lead
by example. You do you act what is opposed to
setting up you have to set up systems. But if
you act the way you want your people to act,
we all act as a team.
Speaker 1 (13:33):
And that's interesting too, because that's very biblical. There's a
verse in one Corinthians eleven to one where Paul, who
wrote the letter, said to people, imitate me as I
imitate Jesus. And I think that's a powerful verse about
the imitational style of leadership. But you're also talking about
a servant leader who says, my job is to serve
(13:54):
my people, not use my people for my own glory.
And when you do that, that makes all the difference
in the world.
Speaker 4 (13:59):
It's funny when I totally agree. And it's the more
ironically that you let go and you can't be lazy
letting go, which is another struggle of mine. But the
more you let go and you let people who are
the right people do what they're doing, they they'll do
(14:20):
the right things, and then it frees me up. Somebody
at one point said to me do what you can
uniquely do, and if you and if it's not uniquely
to you, let's let somebody else do it. Now, that's
a company at scale where one hundred people every quarter
and and so we're growing a lot. So how you
(14:43):
bring people into that culture is interesting and that's a
big challenge.
Speaker 3 (14:48):
But that's that's what we try to do every day.
Speaker 1 (14:51):
That voice is Doug Lebda. He's the CEO of lending Tree,
one of the fastest growing companies in all of the world.
And Doug, real quickly, how fast are you growing? I
think recently I heard what number five for mid sized
companies in America.
Speaker 4 (15:03):
Believe it or not, we're the third fastest growing company
on Nasdaq.
Speaker 1 (15:06):
Oh wow, okay, well, let me ask this. You came
to Charlotte and you started lending Tree out of your
basement and you had immediate success. Is that true?
Speaker 4 (15:15):
No?
Speaker 3 (15:15):
Gosh, no.
Speaker 4 (15:20):
Raised capital from I mean, I didn't have any money.
So I got a five thousand dollars loan investment from
the father of a friend of mine. I then got
a ten thousand dollars investment from a wonderful, wonderful guy
who's passed away from bucknell a guy named Lee Idelman
who taught me a real key thing about entrepreneurship which
(15:43):
we can talk about. And then I raised and then
I moved to Charlotte and raised capital and raised a
million dollars.
Speaker 3 (15:50):
We almost went bankrupt about three times.
Speaker 4 (15:53):
We were probably about fifteen years ahead of the market
because banks didn't have the technology that they needed to
actually return online live offers.
Speaker 3 (16:04):
And now and now it's taking off.
Speaker 1 (16:07):
Well, you've learned a key lesson though, and I want
you to talk about it, just real briefly here before
we go to break and that is failure is not
the end of the game, is it?
Speaker 3 (16:16):
Absolutely not? I mean, what is failure?
Speaker 4 (16:19):
So one of the things I learned early on is
when you start an entrepreneurial journey, that's your life, and
you're going to have moments where you're starting and stopping.
And the good news is is if you look back,
God's right there making it happen, and He's bringing people
(16:42):
into your life at the right times in the right
places you need. My feeling is you got to keep
knocking on the doors. You can't be lazy about it
and just say, oh, it's just going to happen, Because
I think for me at least, I feel God tells
me to knock the doors, and you knock on the doors,
(17:02):
and you know what, the right ones are going to open,
and the right people are going to come into your time,
come into your life at the right time, who are
going to help your company. Or sometimes things are going
to go are going to go south, and when they
go south, sometimes that's when you learn the most, and
that's when you see the most about your people. And
it's been the ups and downs have been interesting.
Speaker 1 (17:25):
It's a wonderful truth to learn all those who are
CEOs entrepreneurs out there right now, that failure is simply
learning how not to do something, and that's a great
truth to learn. Doug Levn is my guest today. He's
the CEO of Lending Tree. Doug, when we come back,
let's talk about entrepreneurialship and what happened with you when
faith became really real to you. I'm David Chadwick. Will
(17:47):
be right back again. Everyone, I'm David Chadwick. Welcome back
(18:31):
to the show and let's continue this absolutely fascinating interview
with Doug Lebda, one who has passed away and going
to be with the Lord in the last several days.
But the CEO of lending Tree Corporation, one of the
largest corporations in all of the world, his faith, his
values and what was really important to him. Here's Doug Lebda.
(18:52):
There was a point where you stepped away from lending
Tree and then it kind of didn't do real well
and you stepped back into the picture. Talk about that
part your story.
Speaker 4 (19:00):
Sure, we sold lending Tree in two thousand and three
to a company called Interactive Corp. And then in two
thousand and six, Barry Diller, who's a sort of a
famous media mogul, asked me to come be president of IC,
which had Ticketmaster, home shopping network, lending Tree, and a
bunch of other companies. It was about sixteen thousand employees.
So my family moved to New York City. We spent
(19:22):
two years up there. Then the financial crisis hit. They
decided to spin off lending Tree in a couple other
companies and decided to come back to Charlotte with my
family and restarted again. And literally it was a restart.
We had about one thousand employees at the time. We
had to go down to about one hundred and fifty.
(19:44):
Now we're growing back to about seven hundred. Those were
interesting tough times, and New York was an interesting experience too.
Speaker 1 (19:51):
For anyone going through a difficult business time right now,
your advice to them would be what.
Speaker 4 (20:00):
Pray, have faith, work hard, knock on all the doors,
and don't stress because it's going to work out or
not based on what is already going to happen. And
when you're going through a tough time, know that that's
making you stronger and it's making you learn more, and
(20:20):
that there's a reason for it. I remember when our
CTO passed away, Rick stieg Or, fifteen years ago, who
is one of my early partners, and I literally could
not get over it. And as I looked back at
his funeral and I looked back, I'm like, Wow, that
guy came into my life at the exact right times
(20:42):
and that this was all meant to be and it
made me stronger through those times.
Speaker 1 (20:46):
So let's move into the faith arena now, because this
is a faith and values program, as most everyone knows,
and I wanted to have you on the program because
I've seen how much your faith has impacted your life.
You had the seeds of faith planted early on by
your mom and dad, you kind of ran away from
it for a while. I could identify with that because
that's exactly what I did as well. But faith became
(21:07):
increasingly real for you. And share your journey.
Speaker 4 (21:09):
Please, probably the gosh that not quite where to start
the journey. I'm a divorced dad of three kids, and.
Speaker 1 (21:20):
A very painful time in your life, a very.
Speaker 3 (21:22):
Very painful time in my life.
Speaker 4 (21:23):
And left a church and a pastor really what I
would say, didn't pastor me when it needed, when he
needed to be pastored, or when I needed to be pastored,
and left it for left the faith for a number
of years and really questioned a lot of things. And
then a friend of mine, one of my earliest lenders,
(21:45):
looked at me in Las Vegas, and the guy is
cancer and he says, how's your relationship with Jesus? And
I said, I found new church. I'm going to church
because that's not what I asked you. I said, how's
your relationship with Jesus? And it made me really think
and uh. And after that, two summers ago, I went
(22:05):
to not you, but another pastor down it down the beach,
and said, you know what, I got to know if
this stuff is real? And if it's real, I'm in.
And if I'm just you know, going to church, you
know I'll go to church. I used to think about
as sort of the insurance policy version of Christianity, exactly exactly,
(22:29):
and uh and I did, and I honestly I did
my research. And once you know that, you know Jesus
was born of a virgin birth, died on the cross,
and was resurrected. And I've got goosebump saying, and I
could probably start crying, and my wife gave me tissues
before I came here.
Speaker 3 (22:50):
Then you then you got to deal with it.
Speaker 4 (22:53):
And the beauty of the beauty of that is you
you deal with it, and you get on your knees
and you accept Christ again and you you move on
and it changes your life.
Speaker 1 (23:02):
One of the most profound studies anyone could ever do
is to look at the facts behind the resurrection, and
they are astounding, overwhelming, and I think proves without doubt
that Jesus really was who he said he was. But
you're mentioning, Doug, something that I talk about all the
time on the show, and that is that it's not
rules and regulations, it's not what you do, it's what's
(23:24):
been done for you. It is a personal living relationship
with the God of this universe through Jesus Christ, who
lives inside of you, walks with you, talks with you,
lead you, guide you. And that's what you've experienced, isn't it.
Speaker 3 (23:36):
It is?
Speaker 4 (23:36):
And I remember a conversation that actually you and I
had very early on where you told me I was
viewing the Bible wrong and that I was viewing it
as rules and regulations and I need to view it
as God forgiving and people screwing up. God forgiving people
screwing up. Not as articulate as you.
Speaker 3 (23:54):
Well, that's it.
Speaker 4 (23:55):
It's a story and story back. Yeah, and that is
what it is. And and that changed my perspective. Realized
I can forgive myself, forgive other people, the wonder of
forgiveness even when somebody does you wrong, the wonder of
(24:16):
loving your neighbor. You know, God is is Uh is
working a plan in people's lives, and it's it's interesting
when you when you do it the right way, how
he blesses you.
Speaker 1 (24:27):
And you've talked to me about how at different points
in your life when you needed someone to step in,
it was like God had arranged that person to be
there before you even knew the person was going to
be there.
Speaker 3 (24:38):
It's so true.
Speaker 4 (24:39):
It's whether it's been my wife, you other, my friend
Tim who had can't who still has cancer, Rick Stiegler
and his funeral, I can I can now trace the path.
And sometimes it's a little freaky because you look back
(25:00):
and you go, oh, my goodness, like this is all
this has been a path, part of.
Speaker 1 (25:07):
The plans, all parts me. Sometimes ago I can't believe ABC,
and I'm going down it's part of the plan.
Speaker 4 (25:12):
Yeah, it's it's really it's a miracle. Yeah, it's a
miracle every single day.
Speaker 1 (25:17):
And you enjoy life to the full like you've never
enjoyed it before. And you have a great marriage now
through the pain and difficulty of your divorce, you now
have moved into an intimate relationship with your present wife,
and you've seen God redeem that as well.
Speaker 4 (25:32):
I believe we have and we have a wonderful marriage.
We you know, not to plug your books, but you
know we read them. I'll never forget.
Speaker 1 (25:42):
That's amazing within itself. I got somebody who.
Speaker 4 (25:44):
Read them, and we try to honor each other. We
have you know, we set aside time for each other yesterday.
It's you know, for us, it's a Wednesdays from nine
to one is the time that we can actually set
aside for ourselves.
Speaker 3 (26:02):
It's your time, it's our time. Phones go off.
Speaker 4 (26:05):
We we make sure our hearts are in check. We
make sure that our relationship is good. Sometimes we'll go
for a walk, sometimes we'll sleep in, sometimes we'll you know,
have breakfast together, go to the waffle house. But it's
it's our time to make sure that we can that
we can absolutely check in. And I'll never forget when
(26:28):
the first time I met you and you said marriage
is closed the door. It was literally about the third
sentence out of your mouth, like, hey David, nice to
meet you.
Speaker 3 (26:37):
I'm Doug.
Speaker 4 (26:38):
And you said, oh, but I was engaged, And you said, oh, well,
just no. When you go in, you close the door
behind you.
Speaker 1 (26:45):
Door is locked from the outside. To give my exact
phraseology exactly.
Speaker 3 (26:50):
And when you.
Speaker 1 (26:51):
Believe that though, and you take for sure that the
back door's locked from the outside and you you're not
going to get out, You've made that commitment. It's a
covenant that marriage isn't a contract based on feelings and circumstances.
It's a coveing based on my word that I'm not
going to leave. Well, you work the problems out. Yeah,
if you know you're not going to go anywhere, and
the other person knows that, you go, okay, we've got
to work this problem out. We've got to forgive, we've
(27:12):
got to be gracious towards one another, whatever.
Speaker 4 (27:15):
And you forgive, you do work it out, and you
still fight like cats and dogs sometimes.
Speaker 1 (27:21):
And I'm forty years almost into mind and mer Lai
regularly have some TIFFs, but they're the sparks that fly
because two people are trying to draw closer to one exactly.
My dad used to say, the closer two people get,
the more they bump the key exactly.
Speaker 4 (27:33):
And the key thing is once you actually say to
each other that it's two people who are, over the
course of their marriage, going to become one person, and
you're trying to actually come closer together, and you've got
that entire commitment and it's not just a you know, hey,
we got married, and it's uh, you know, you're twenty
six years old, and it's like who you're dating at
(27:55):
the time, and you get there and you literally sit down,
you think about it. You pray about it, you go
into it, and it's going to be bumpy, and it's
gonna work, and you're going to but you're but you
view once you start viewing things on a scale of
infinity as opposed to the scale of your seventy five
(28:17):
or eighty or ninety years or one hundred years, if
you're lucky on this earth, then you think about things differently.
Speaker 1 (28:24):
Well, my dad used to say the phrase we just
use that the closer two people get, the more they bump.
But they also then would follow that up with and
the truth is, when you realize there is an obstacle
in your marriage, it's keeping you from getting closer and closer,
the bumping allows you to identify what it is and
get rid of it so that you can then move
closer and closer together. And that's really what marriage.
Speaker 3 (28:44):
Is all about. Absolutely.
Speaker 4 (28:46):
And I would also say the same thing about business,
because walking in somebody's shoes and understanding another person's perspective
is the key to not only business, probably to marriage,
and it's a way of having empathy and understanding somebody
else's perspective.
Speaker 1 (29:01):
Doug lebn Is, my guest, will continue this conversation about
how to operate business successfully. In just a moment, I'm
David Chadwick, will be right back. A raise a Holly.
Speaker 3 (29:51):
Mypit is a melody, A raise a Holly Harvey One.
Speaker 1 (30:02):
I'm David Chadwick.
Speaker 3 (30:03):
Welcome back to the show.
Speaker 1 (30:05):
I hope you're enjoying this interview with Doug Lebda, done
December twenty seventeen here on WBT Radio, and let's continue
to have some more of his thoughts on his faith,
his family, and entrepreneurial leadership. Doug, this has been absolutely fascinating.
I'm learning even as I talk with you about the
things that have driven you and lending Tree Now is
(30:28):
imminently successful, and in fact, you've done something here in
the city as a leader in the NBA, the National
Basketball Association industry, by recently within the last several weeks,
having lending Tree Now attached to the jerseys of the
Charlotte Hornets.
Speaker 4 (30:46):
We have it was a great deal. It's a great partnership.
We're going to work together in business and the values lineup,
and we really got to know the people. I got
to know Michael Jordan, I got to know his team,
got to understand that our organizations can work well together
and they did a great job rolling it out.
Speaker 3 (31:07):
I think it'll be great for the community.
Speaker 4 (31:08):
We're doing a lot with basketball scholarships we're don't allow
with the Lending Tree Foundation, which we will align with them.
It's a lot of fun entrepreneurialship.
Speaker 1 (31:19):
If you have anybody listening who wants to start up
a business, I mean, this is really what you do well.
You actually teach classes on entrepreneurialship at universities as US
in NBA programs. If you had to give anyone listening
who is thinking about starting up something, what would you
say to them?
Speaker 4 (31:38):
So the advice that I got from Jim Collins is,
first off, you have to just do it. You have
to commit to the fact of being an entrepreneur. Then
from there you have to practice what in the literature
will be known as effectuation, which is walking in somebody
else's shoes, thinking about.
Speaker 3 (31:56):
Who you know, what do you know?
Speaker 4 (31:59):
Not necessary like going out and creating a website and saying, oh,
I'm going to do something that's outside of your sphere
of influence. But start close to what you know and
who you are, and think of yourself like a chef.
The best entrepreneurs can basically take any ingredients. If I'm
sitting here looking at this table, and I can go,
all right, I got a coffee cup in your notebook, like,
(32:20):
how do we mix that together into something that's interesting?
Speaker 3 (32:24):
And that's what entrepreneurs do.
Speaker 4 (32:26):
And know that it's going to be a completely bumpy
ride from here to wherever it goes. But you honestly
need to let it go because the more you stress
about it.
Speaker 3 (32:37):
The more you hold on tight, the less it works.
Speaker 1 (32:41):
My son has started up a business, and you've counseled him.
You have said to him and to me that starting
up something from scratch is the toughest business endeavor you
can ever do. I didn't do that exactly at the church,
but pretty close to it. And it is hard, and
you have to start from the beginning. You never know
what's exactly ahead of you. But with perseverance you can
(33:05):
keep moving forward. Talk about the value of perseverance.
Speaker 4 (33:09):
So perseverance absolutely matters, and you need to stick with
it up until what's called your affordable loss, which I
could talk about, but a really important thing which I
could say about your son, and I could talk about
the early days of lending Tree, particularly in the early
days is integrity because when you're doing a deal with
(33:30):
somebody else, whatever it is, they're relying on your trust.
And the earliest lenders on lending Tree had to rely
on the fact that we weren't going to give them
a bad deal, that we were going to deliver them
customers and they were going to actually make money. And
we said, I always say, we want to do well
when our customers do well, when lenders do well, and
(33:53):
when we do well, and the intersection of that is
when you can actually do it. But there were twenty
companies like lending Tree who fell away, many of them
because they were distrustful with their clients.
Speaker 1 (34:07):
So you have to be a person of integrity. And
that word integrity is often overused, but what it really
means is your life is totally integrated. That you are
the same person publicly and privately. You're the same person
with your words and your deeds. You are the same
person that anybody would want to know, no matter whenever
they would meet you.
Speaker 4 (34:27):
Yes, And so that's so now I've learned something today
which is great, and I call that authenticity. And I've
always said, like, whoever you are, be authentic. And if
you're an authentic wing nut. Be an authentic wing nut.
If you're authentically intelligent, be authentically intelligent. But don't fake it.
Don't fake whatever you are, whoever you are, because you
(34:50):
are who you are, and you can own it and
you can acknowledge it. Acknowledge your weaknesses, move on, get better,
forgive people, have people forgive you, forgive yourself, and you know,
keep walking through this life and doing the best you can.
Speaker 1 (35:07):
You keep talking about forgiveness. That keeps being a theme
that I hear from you as we talk and get
to know one another more and more, and you talk
about forgiving yourself, receiving God's forgiveness for you, and then
continuing to move forward. Talk a little bit more dug
about forgiveness because that seems to be at the heart
of your faith. It certainly is mine as well.
Speaker 4 (35:29):
I think, even if you're not talking to somebody I have.
I draw this this two by two matrix that I
have if you could think about it and on the
and it basically is performance and how much they fit
in your culture. Why access being culture exact is being performance.
(35:51):
And sometimes in the lower left, for example, you have
people who don't care about you and aren't good friends
or ouses or employees, et cetera, et cetera. And you
have to be able to forgive. And then you have
people in the upper right that are still going to
sometimes you know, not be right in your life, and
(36:13):
you have to forgive them too. The power of forgiveness
for me is it's it's not only for the person
you're forgiving. I think it's more important for yourself to
be able to let that bitterness go and move on.
Because what is the purpose of going tomorrow to be bitter?
If you did something to me right now that you
(36:35):
know made me angry and I forgave you, how's it
going to benefit me When I drive out of here
and you know I'm bitter at David Chadwick, I want
to Uh, I would want to forgive you and move
on with my life. And it would make us, It
would bring us closer.
Speaker 1 (36:50):
Yeah, it should, And that's what happens when forgiveness is
practiced rightly. It leads to reconciliation, which is what God
would wive out. But you know what bitterness is like
drinking arsenic and expecting the other person to die. It's crazy.
It is it eat your own heart up right and
true forgiveness I think is giving up my right to retaliate.
Speaker 4 (37:13):
Yes, and it's very, very, very difficult, and.
Speaker 1 (37:18):
It's not our human nature. We want to retaliate, We
want to get even, we want justice to happen to
other people. We want mercy for ourselves, but we want
justice to happen to other people.
Speaker 4 (37:27):
Yes, it's the you know I learned last week, it's
the chemicals in your brain that are causing certain reactions.
And whether it's the chemicals or the devil, it doesn't
You can't. You have to give up the ability to retaliate.
And you basically need to think about Jesus and when
you think about the forgiveness that he gave and then
(37:48):
he went on the that he hung on the cross,
and when I think when times are tough, and I think,
this is what that guy did for me, my friend Jesus,
How the heck can I be mad? How can I
not forgive? How can I not forgive a bad deal
or something that happened in my life?
Speaker 1 (38:08):
The love that you extend others is greatly attached to
the love that you know from him. And Doug, thank
you for being on the show today. It sounds like
that your life is moving forward. I pray for the
best for you, for Megan, your children, for Lending Tree
to continue to have a great impact on our community
and help make Charlotte all that it can be.
Speaker 3 (38:27):
Thank you very much. It's been great to be here
today and everyone.
Speaker 1 (38:29):
Let me close the program the way I close it
every single week. Hey, love God and love your neighbor.
If you'll just do those two things, you have a
lifetime's worth of work to do. I'm David Chadwick, This
News eleven, ten ninety nine and three WVT. I'll talk
with you all next week.
Hi everyone, I'm David Chadwick and this is News Talk
eleven ten ninety nine to three WBT. Welcome to the show.
In case you don't know, this is a faith in
values program that airs every week here on WBT Radio.
It's been a pleasure doing the show now for well
over twenty five years. I've enjoyed it so much. Thank
you Perry's Fine Jewelry for your sponsorship of the show.
Without you, I could not do this on a weekly basis. Well,
(00:31):
I want to use a friendship for the most part
of this show. About eight years ago, Ed Billick and
I interviewed Doug Lebda, the founder of Lending Tree here
in the city of Charlotte, and Doug and I became
good friends over the years, and many of you know
he tragically passed away about a week plus ago in
(00:53):
an ATV accident where he was riding his vehicle in
his Mountain Area farm and flipped over on him and
his head hit a rock I think it was, and
there was trauma to his brain and evidently he died instantaneously.
Well Ed Billick discovered our interview with Doug back in
twenty eighteen, some eight years ago, and so we thought
(01:15):
it would be a great way, in a tribute to him,
to replay that interview. But before we do that, Ed,
we're going to talk just a second about what happened
in the Mideast, because we would be remiss if we
didn't comment on that. I mean, I think President Trump's
accomplishment in bringing about a twenty point piece accord in
that area of the world after two plus years of
(01:36):
enormous conflict is quite a success for him. Would you
agree with that? Well?
Speaker 2 (01:41):
Absolutely, And the release of the hostages really kind of
showcase the whole thing. But gosh, David, as you and
I know, there's a lot of work yet to be done.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
Yeah, you know, after we saw the twenty hostages released,
and my wife, Marilyn has set her alarm every day
at eleven fifty nine am, and when it goes off,
she has for over two years prayed for the release
of those hostages, and she had tears going down her
cheek as she watched the hostages being released. Those of
(02:10):
us who have children, you can only imagine how the
families felt seeing those in captivity for two plus years
coming home, and it looked like most of them were well.
And I celebrate that twenty eight lives that were lost
during the captivity bodies have not yet been released to
the Israelis. There's still that pain among families who are going,
(02:31):
what was my child killed there? Did my child die there?
And so that's still yet to happen, and I pray
that will happen, just for the peace that can only
come with finality and closure for the parents. But then
ed you and I both remarked as we started to
show today the hideous pictures of Gosins who found fellow
(02:53):
Gosins who they think betrayed the Gosen cause, the Hamas cause,
and they brought them into the streets, made them kneel
cameras filming all of this, and they shot them in
the back of their necks because they felt like they
were traders to the Hamas Gaza cause. And I just
can't even begin to understand why someone would do that
(03:15):
right after a peace accord. But it does suggest the
reality that the peace accord is important. It is a
treaty that people are agreeing to. But how do you
change a human heart, That's what's really the question right now.
And there's still Iran out there and other Arabs in
that part of the world who want the complete eradication
(03:37):
of Israel. They don't want a piece of cord. They
want Israel thrown into the heart of the sea from
the river to the sea. That's what that chant means.
They want that area of the world to be given
back to Palestinians. And of course the Israelis still think
it is their homeland guaranteed them by God in a
promise to Abraham back in Genesis twelve thousands of years ago.
(04:00):
So I don't see how this conflict is going to
go away anytime soon, because the real problem is a
problem of hatred in the human heart. And I still
will pray for the peace of Jerusalem, as Psalm one
twenty two, verse six says, I still pray for peace
in the mid East. But I just found it fascinating
(04:20):
that after the peace Accord was signed and President Trump
goes to Egypt and has a victory lap if you will,
and the world is celebrating him, you then have the
execution of these people in the streets of Gaza City,
and it just shows again the reality of hatred and
the human hearts.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
Yeah, who's intended to take over the leadership there? Who's
going to rule the government, and what's that government going
to look like? And there's so many unanswered questions. I'm
sure that's all been thought out, at least I.
Speaker 3 (04:46):
Hope it's well.
Speaker 1 (04:47):
I think they are at least beginning to talk through
what that means. One of the big questions is the
Palestinians want East Jerusalem back under their control. That was
lost in the nineteen sixty seven war. The Israelis were
able to take over East Jerusalem, gave the oversight of
the Temple Mount, where the Alaska Mosque exists, the third
holiest site in all of Islam. But the Jordanians are
(05:10):
allowing more Jews to go up on the Temple Mount.
Right now, there's a lot of talk about the rebuilding
of the Third Temple, the Jew's holiest site that was
lost in seventy a d when the Romans destroyed it,
And how can that happen with the Arabs thinking, no,
that's our third holiest site, We're not going to allow
that temple to be rebuilt, and the Jews wanting that
to happen. East Jerusalem still under technically the control of
(05:32):
the Jews. Would they dare give that up to the Arabs?
I don't think so. That's another source of conflict that
exists in that.
Speaker 3 (05:38):
Area of the world.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
Nowhere do you read that in the media. Our friend here,
David Chadwick, always opens our eyes to the biblical references.
Speaker 1 (05:46):
David Well, I hope I can. And there will be
a third Temple biblically that is rebuilt. We've done shows
on that, and I don't know how to overlook the
fact that that temple will occur and what will that
cause as an international conflagration, don't know, but let's keep
our eyes on that area of the world. Let's keep
praying for it. Now I want to introduce to all
of you my friend Doug Lebda. He's speaking from the
(06:08):
other side of eternity really right now for us. We
did this interview in December of twenty seventeen, some eight
years ago. Doug was a man of great faith, a
man of great ingenuity, a man of great vision, and
really just a good friend to me as well. And
I hope you'll enjoy this interview as it gives you
insights into his entrepreneurial leadership, his ability to take something
(06:30):
that was not in existence in existence and become one
of the largest growing companies in the world called Lending Tree.
Doug Lebda a wonderful man, married to Megan, his family
now grieving over him. The celebration of his life will
be today two thirty at Founder's Hall uptown the Bank
of America. I would invite you to come. I think
(06:51):
Megan would want you to come, if that's what you'd
like to do, and we will celebrate his life now
in this interview, everyone, this is Doug eight years ago.
Speaker 2 (07:30):
The cities, the who just open.
Speaker 3 (07:39):
How everyone?
Speaker 1 (07:40):
I divid Chadwick, welcome back to the show. And as promised,
here is my interview with Doug Lebda, who tragically died
a few days ago, now in heaven, but a wonderful
interview done eight years ago about Doug's life and leadership
and faith. Doug LEBNA, CEO of Lending Tree, my guest
today and we talked about you. You graduated from college.
(08:02):
Where'd you go from there?
Speaker 4 (08:04):
I was an accountant in Pittsburgh for Price Waterhouse for
four years, and during that time I tried to get
up mortgage on a fifty five thousand dollars condominium on
Mount Washington and got basically the run around from the banks.
I looked in the newspaper. I went to the banks
around the corner. I put my tie in, I put
(08:25):
my suit on, and they told me the rate wasn't
for me. It was a condo. You have to get
flood insurance on the top of a mountain, and it
just didn't make sense for me, Thankfully. A year later,
I was doing some consulting work, believe it or not,
in the natural gas industry, and I was watching markets
develop in.
Speaker 3 (08:45):
Very eccentric and.
Speaker 4 (08:47):
Sort of weird areas where you could actually and I said,
where you could trade almost anything. And I said, why
can't consumers actually get full transparency on their loans, be
able to say of money and make banks compete, and
why can't we turn the whole process around?
Speaker 3 (09:03):
So that was after that.
Speaker 4 (09:06):
Tried to tell a couple banks in nineteen ninety five
early nineteen ninety six they had no technology. I went
to the University of Virginia for a year and during
that year developed the business plan for lending Tree, and
then at the end of the year decided to leave
and move to Charlotte, Oh.
Speaker 1 (09:24):
Now UV eight, did you do graduate level work or
were you just working there in Charlotte's.
Speaker 4 (09:29):
Full to figure I was there in business school. Nope,
I was there in business school and left at the
end of the year. I was probably God, what made
me go to this one class? It was a second
year class and I was a first year student, and
it was Jim Collins teaching an entrepreneurship class.
Speaker 1 (09:49):
Oh, the good the great guy.
Speaker 3 (09:51):
Yes, business, Yes.
Speaker 4 (09:53):
And he basically I could recite it here on air
if you wanted to, but I'll save you time. He
basically walk through why you should go create your own
path and not go work for a company.
Speaker 3 (10:07):
And I went down. I went home and.
Speaker 4 (10:10):
I literally wrote out a decision tree, the other thing
I learned in business school, and said, you know what,
let's give it one year. And gave it one year
and moved to Charlotte and set up lending Tree in
my spare in my spare bedroom.
Speaker 1 (10:23):
Okay, so this is really an entrepreneurial startup. You're not
using somebody else's genius. This is your baby from the
very beginning.
Speaker 4 (10:33):
Correct it is, and it isn't because our entire company
is built around empowerment. It's built around and Jim Collins
a lot of those principles, and I think a lot
of those principles are in the.
Speaker 3 (10:46):
Bible that our company is not about me.
Speaker 4 (10:51):
It has to be about everybody else, and it has
to be about ideas coming from the bottom, ideas coming
from everywhere, how you actually make them. I was had
a great conversation a week ago with a good mentor
and professor of mine who's also on our board, and
she said, the goal of the leader is to make
(11:11):
yourself obsolete. And I've struggled with that because who wants
to be obsolete? But at the same time, if you've
got a company with principles and values that you want
to have carry on, it's my job to then empower
other people to make it their own.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
That's an interesting idea of leadership. I can remember back
in the eighties when I began my ministry at Forest Hill,
a church here in Charlotte, that I was taught to
lead from upfront with a kind of an autocratic style.
Top down. People follow. I get the vision. And I've
learned over the last couple of decades, actually going back
to almost when you are teaching these very principles, that
(11:53):
it just doesn't work. Really, You've got to get good
people on board, and you've got to get their ideas
to be part of the overall plan and the vision.
And when you do so, it's everybody together making the
whole organization, the whole church, whatever stronger.
Speaker 4 (12:07):
The absolutely absolutely one of my mentors. I was very
lucky to get to work with Jack Welch for a
two and a half years And what he used to
always say is it's the people at the level below
you that build you up, that give you the chance
to get to the next level, as opposed to your
own genius and doing it for yourself. Now you can
(12:30):
carry that with the always. The other side is the
Dilbert cartoon that says, well, if everybody hires smart people,
the dumbest guy's a CEO.
Speaker 3 (12:39):
But a lot of what.
Speaker 4 (12:42):
You have to do it's all about people, Yeah, and
getting the right people, making sure you have the right
principles making and then making sure the principles track right
down through every level of whether it's compensation, pay, how
you act.
Speaker 3 (12:56):
Who you hire, who you let go, and how motivated.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
And that's culture, isn't it in an organization? And someone
once said that a bad culture will trump a great
vision every single day of the week. So when you've
got a great vision and a great culture, then you've
got success brewing.
Speaker 4 (13:12):
We yes, absolutely, and you have to have. And the
leadership that I've learned is you just try to lead
by example. You do you act what is opposed to
setting up you have to set up systems. But if
you act the way you want your people to act,
we all act as a team.
Speaker 1 (13:33):
And that's interesting too, because that's very biblical. There's a
verse in one Corinthians eleven to one where Paul, who
wrote the letter, said to people, imitate me as I
imitate Jesus. And I think that's a powerful verse about
the imitational style of leadership. But you're also talking about
a servant leader who says, my job is to serve
(13:54):
my people, not use my people for my own glory.
And when you do that, that makes all the difference
in the world.
Speaker 4 (13:59):
It's funny when I totally agree. And it's the more
ironically that you let go and you can't be lazy
letting go, which is another struggle of mine. But the
more you let go and you let people who are
the right people do what they're doing, they they'll do
(14:20):
the right things, and then it frees me up. Somebody
at one point said to me do what you can
uniquely do, and if you and if it's not uniquely
to you, let's let somebody else do it. Now, that's
a company at scale where one hundred people every quarter
and and so we're growing a lot. So how you
(14:43):
bring people into that culture is interesting and that's a
big challenge.
Speaker 3 (14:48):
But that's that's what we try to do every day.
Speaker 1 (14:51):
That voice is Doug Lebda. He's the CEO of lending Tree,
one of the fastest growing companies in all of the world.
And Doug, real quickly, how fast are you growing? I
think recently I heard what number five for mid sized
companies in America.
Speaker 4 (15:03):
Believe it or not, we're the third fastest growing company
on Nasdaq.
Speaker 1 (15:06):
Oh wow, okay, well, let me ask this. You came
to Charlotte and you started lending Tree out of your
basement and you had immediate success. Is that true?
Speaker 4 (15:15):
No?
Speaker 3 (15:15):
Gosh, no.
Speaker 4 (15:20):
Raised capital from I mean, I didn't have any money.
So I got a five thousand dollars loan investment from
the father of a friend of mine. I then got
a ten thousand dollars investment from a wonderful, wonderful guy
who's passed away from bucknell a guy named Lee Idelman
who taught me a real key thing about entrepreneurship which
(15:43):
we can talk about. And then I raised and then
I moved to Charlotte and raised capital and raised a
million dollars.
Speaker 3 (15:50):
We almost went bankrupt about three times.
Speaker 4 (15:53):
We were probably about fifteen years ahead of the market
because banks didn't have the technology that they needed to
actually return online live offers.
Speaker 3 (16:04):
And now and now it's taking off.
Speaker 1 (16:07):
Well, you've learned a key lesson though, and I want
you to talk about it, just real briefly here before
we go to break and that is failure is not
the end of the game, is it?
Speaker 3 (16:16):
Absolutely not? I mean, what is failure?
Speaker 4 (16:19):
So one of the things I learned early on is
when you start an entrepreneurial journey, that's your life, and
you're going to have moments where you're starting and stopping.
And the good news is is if you look back,
God's right there making it happen, and He's bringing people
(16:42):
into your life at the right times in the right
places you need. My feeling is you got to keep
knocking on the doors. You can't be lazy about it
and just say, oh, it's just going to happen, Because
I think for me at least, I feel God tells
me to knock the doors, and you knock on the doors,
(17:02):
and you know what, the right ones are going to open,
and the right people are going to come into your time,
come into your life at the right time, who are
going to help your company. Or sometimes things are going
to go are going to go south, and when they
go south, sometimes that's when you learn the most, and
that's when you see the most about your people. And
it's been the ups and downs have been interesting.
Speaker 1 (17:25):
It's a wonderful truth to learn all those who are
CEOs entrepreneurs out there right now, that failure is simply
learning how not to do something, and that's a great
truth to learn. Doug Levn is my guest today. He's
the CEO of Lending Tree. Doug, when we come back,
let's talk about entrepreneurialship and what happened with you when
faith became really real to you. I'm David Chadwick. Will
(17:47):
be right back again. Everyone, I'm David Chadwick. Welcome back
(18:31):
to the show and let's continue this absolutely fascinating interview
with Doug Lebda, one who has passed away and going
to be with the Lord in the last several days.
But the CEO of lending Tree Corporation, one of the
largest corporations in all of the world, his faith, his
values and what was really important to him. Here's Doug Lebda.
(18:52):
There was a point where you stepped away from lending
Tree and then it kind of didn't do real well
and you stepped back into the picture. Talk about that
part your story.
Speaker 4 (19:00):
Sure, we sold lending Tree in two thousand and three
to a company called Interactive Corp. And then in two
thousand and six, Barry Diller, who's a sort of a
famous media mogul, asked me to come be president of IC,
which had Ticketmaster, home shopping network, lending Tree, and a
bunch of other companies. It was about sixteen thousand employees.
So my family moved to New York City. We spent
(19:22):
two years up there. Then the financial crisis hit. They
decided to spin off lending Tree in a couple other
companies and decided to come back to Charlotte with my
family and restarted again. And literally it was a restart.
We had about one thousand employees at the time. We
had to go down to about one hundred and fifty.
(19:44):
Now we're growing back to about seven hundred. Those were
interesting tough times, and New York was an interesting experience too.
Speaker 1 (19:51):
For anyone going through a difficult business time right now,
your advice to them would be what.
Speaker 4 (20:00):
Pray, have faith, work hard, knock on all the doors,
and don't stress because it's going to work out or
not based on what is already going to happen. And
when you're going through a tough time, know that that's
making you stronger and it's making you learn more, and
(20:20):
that there's a reason for it. I remember when our
CTO passed away, Rick stieg Or, fifteen years ago, who
is one of my early partners, and I literally could
not get over it. And as I looked back at
his funeral and I looked back, I'm like, Wow, that
guy came into my life at the exact right times
(20:42):
and that this was all meant to be and it
made me stronger through those times.
Speaker 1 (20:46):
So let's move into the faith arena now, because this
is a faith and values program, as most everyone knows,
and I wanted to have you on the program because
I've seen how much your faith has impacted your life.
You had the seeds of faith planted early on by
your mom and dad, you kind of ran away from
it for a while. I could identify with that because
that's exactly what I did as well. But faith became
(21:07):
increasingly real for you. And share your journey.
Speaker 4 (21:09):
Please, probably the gosh that not quite where to start
the journey. I'm a divorced dad of three kids, and.
Speaker 1 (21:20):
A very painful time in your life, a very.
Speaker 3 (21:22):
Very painful time in my life.
Speaker 4 (21:23):
And left a church and a pastor really what I
would say, didn't pastor me when it needed, when he
needed to be pastored, or when I needed to be pastored,
and left it for left the faith for a number
of years and really questioned a lot of things. And
then a friend of mine, one of my earliest lenders,
(21:45):
looked at me in Las Vegas, and the guy is
cancer and he says, how's your relationship with Jesus? And
I said, I found new church. I'm going to church
because that's not what I asked you. I said, how's
your relationship with Jesus? And it made me really think
and uh. And after that, two summers ago, I went
(22:05):
to not you, but another pastor down it down the beach,
and said, you know what, I got to know if
this stuff is real? And if it's real, I'm in.
And if I'm just you know, going to church, you
know I'll go to church. I used to think about
as sort of the insurance policy version of Christianity, exactly exactly,
(22:29):
and uh and I did, and I honestly I did
my research. And once you know that, you know Jesus
was born of a virgin birth, died on the cross,
and was resurrected. And I've got goosebump saying, and I
could probably start crying, and my wife gave me tissues
before I came here.
Speaker 3 (22:50):
Then you then you got to deal with it.
Speaker 4 (22:53):
And the beauty of the beauty of that is you
you deal with it, and you get on your knees
and you accept Christ again and you you move on
and it changes your life.
Speaker 1 (23:02):
One of the most profound studies anyone could ever do
is to look at the facts behind the resurrection, and
they are astounding, overwhelming, and I think proves without doubt
that Jesus really was who he said he was. But
you're mentioning, Doug, something that I talk about all the
time on the show, and that is that it's not
rules and regulations, it's not what you do, it's what's
(23:24):
been done for you. It is a personal living relationship
with the God of this universe through Jesus Christ, who
lives inside of you, walks with you, talks with you,
lead you, guide you. And that's what you've experienced, isn't it.
Speaker 3 (23:36):
It is?
Speaker 4 (23:36):
And I remember a conversation that actually you and I
had very early on where you told me I was
viewing the Bible wrong and that I was viewing it
as rules and regulations and I need to view it
as God forgiving and people screwing up. God forgiving people
screwing up. Not as articulate as you.
Speaker 3 (23:54):
Well, that's it.
Speaker 4 (23:55):
It's a story and story back. Yeah, and that is
what it is. And and that changed my perspective. Realized
I can forgive myself, forgive other people, the wonder of
forgiveness even when somebody does you wrong, the wonder of
(24:16):
loving your neighbor. You know, God is is Uh is
working a plan in people's lives, and it's it's interesting
when you when you do it the right way, how
he blesses you.
Speaker 1 (24:27):
And you've talked to me about how at different points
in your life when you needed someone to step in,
it was like God had arranged that person to be
there before you even knew the person was going to
be there.
Speaker 3 (24:38):
It's so true.
Speaker 4 (24:39):
It's whether it's been my wife, you other, my friend
Tim who had can't who still has cancer, Rick Stiegler
and his funeral, I can I can now trace the path.
And sometimes it's a little freaky because you look back
(25:00):
and you go, oh, my goodness, like this is all
this has been a path, part of.
Speaker 1 (25:07):
The plans, all parts me. Sometimes ago I can't believe ABC,
and I'm going down it's part of the plan.
Speaker 4 (25:12):
Yeah, it's it's really it's a miracle. Yeah, it's a
miracle every single day.
Speaker 1 (25:17):
And you enjoy life to the full like you've never
enjoyed it before. And you have a great marriage now
through the pain and difficulty of your divorce, you now
have moved into an intimate relationship with your present wife,
and you've seen God redeem that as well.
Speaker 4 (25:32):
I believe we have and we have a wonderful marriage.
We you know, not to plug your books, but you
know we read them. I'll never forget.
Speaker 1 (25:42):
That's amazing within itself. I got somebody who.
Speaker 4 (25:44):
Read them, and we try to honor each other. We
have you know, we set aside time for each other yesterday.
It's you know, for us, it's a Wednesdays from nine
to one is the time that we can actually set
aside for ourselves.
Speaker 3 (26:02):
It's your time, it's our time. Phones go off.
Speaker 4 (26:05):
We we make sure our hearts are in check. We
make sure that our relationship is good. Sometimes we'll go
for a walk, sometimes we'll sleep in, sometimes we'll you know,
have breakfast together, go to the waffle house. But it's
it's our time to make sure that we can that
we can absolutely check in. And I'll never forget when
(26:28):
the first time I met you and you said marriage
is closed the door. It was literally about the third
sentence out of your mouth, like, hey David, nice to
meet you.
Speaker 3 (26:37):
I'm Doug.
Speaker 4 (26:38):
And you said, oh, but I was engaged, And you said, oh, well,
just no. When you go in, you close the door
behind you.
Speaker 1 (26:45):
Door is locked from the outside. To give my exact
phraseology exactly.
Speaker 3 (26:50):
And when you.
Speaker 1 (26:51):
Believe that though, and you take for sure that the
back door's locked from the outside and you you're not
going to get out, You've made that commitment. It's a
covenant that marriage isn't a contract based on feelings and circumstances.
It's a coveing based on my word that I'm not
going to leave. Well, you work the problems out. Yeah,
if you know you're not going to go anywhere, and
the other person knows that, you go, okay, we've got
to work this problem out. We've got to forgive, we've
(27:12):
got to be gracious towards one another, whatever.
Speaker 4 (27:15):
And you forgive, you do work it out, and you
still fight like cats and dogs sometimes.
Speaker 1 (27:21):
And I'm forty years almost into mind and mer Lai
regularly have some TIFFs, but they're the sparks that fly
because two people are trying to draw closer to one exactly.
My dad used to say, the closer two people get,
the more they bump the key exactly.
Speaker 4 (27:33):
And the key thing is once you actually say to
each other that it's two people who are, over the
course of their marriage, going to become one person, and
you're trying to actually come closer together, and you've got
that entire commitment and it's not just a you know, hey,
we got married, and it's uh, you know, you're twenty
six years old, and it's like who you're dating at
(27:55):
the time, and you get there and you literally sit down,
you think about it. You pray about it, you go
into it, and it's going to be bumpy, and it's
gonna work, and you're going to but you're but you
view once you start viewing things on a scale of
infinity as opposed to the scale of your seventy five
(28:17):
or eighty or ninety years or one hundred years, if
you're lucky on this earth, then you think about things differently.
Speaker 1 (28:24):
Well, my dad used to say the phrase we just
use that the closer two people get, the more they bump.
But they also then would follow that up with and
the truth is, when you realize there is an obstacle
in your marriage, it's keeping you from getting closer and closer,
the bumping allows you to identify what it is and
get rid of it so that you can then move
closer and closer together. And that's really what marriage.
Speaker 3 (28:44):
Is all about. Absolutely.
Speaker 4 (28:46):
And I would also say the same thing about business,
because walking in somebody's shoes and understanding another person's perspective
is the key to not only business, probably to marriage,
and it's a way of having empathy and understanding somebody
else's perspective.
Speaker 1 (29:01):
Doug lebn Is, my guest, will continue this conversation about
how to operate business successfully. In just a moment, I'm
David Chadwick, will be right back. A raise a Holly.
Speaker 3 (29:51):
Mypit is a melody, A raise a Holly Harvey One.
Speaker 1 (30:02):
I'm David Chadwick.
Speaker 3 (30:03):
Welcome back to the show.
Speaker 1 (30:05):
I hope you're enjoying this interview with Doug Lebda, done
December twenty seventeen here on WBT Radio, and let's continue
to have some more of his thoughts on his faith,
his family, and entrepreneurial leadership. Doug, this has been absolutely fascinating.
I'm learning even as I talk with you about the
things that have driven you and lending Tree Now is
(30:28):
imminently successful, and in fact, you've done something here in
the city as a leader in the NBA, the National
Basketball Association industry, by recently within the last several weeks,
having lending Tree Now attached to the jerseys of the
Charlotte Hornets.
Speaker 4 (30:46):
We have it was a great deal. It's a great partnership.
We're going to work together in business and the values lineup,
and we really got to know the people. I got
to know Michael Jordan, I got to know his team,
got to understand that our organizations can work well together
and they did a great job rolling it out.
Speaker 3 (31:07):
I think it'll be great for the community.
Speaker 4 (31:08):
We're doing a lot with basketball scholarships we're don't allow
with the Lending Tree Foundation, which we will align with them.
It's a lot of fun entrepreneurialship.
Speaker 1 (31:19):
If you have anybody listening who wants to start up
a business, I mean, this is really what you do well.
You actually teach classes on entrepreneurialship at universities as US
in NBA programs. If you had to give anyone listening
who is thinking about starting up something, what would you
say to them?
Speaker 4 (31:38):
So the advice that I got from Jim Collins is,
first off, you have to just do it. You have
to commit to the fact of being an entrepreneur. Then
from there you have to practice what in the literature
will be known as effectuation, which is walking in somebody
else's shoes, thinking about.
Speaker 3 (31:56):
Who you know, what do you know?
Speaker 4 (31:59):
Not necessary like going out and creating a website and saying, oh,
I'm going to do something that's outside of your sphere
of influence. But start close to what you know and
who you are, and think of yourself like a chef.
The best entrepreneurs can basically take any ingredients. If I'm
sitting here looking at this table, and I can go,
all right, I got a coffee cup in your notebook, like,
(32:20):
how do we mix that together into something that's interesting?
Speaker 3 (32:24):
And that's what entrepreneurs do.
Speaker 4 (32:26):
And know that it's going to be a completely bumpy
ride from here to wherever it goes. But you honestly
need to let it go because the more you stress
about it.
Speaker 3 (32:37):
The more you hold on tight, the less it works.
Speaker 1 (32:41):
My son has started up a business, and you've counseled him.
You have said to him and to me that starting
up something from scratch is the toughest business endeavor you
can ever do. I didn't do that exactly at the church,
but pretty close to it. And it is hard, and
you have to start from the beginning. You never know
what's exactly ahead of you. But with perseverance you can
(33:05):
keep moving forward. Talk about the value of perseverance.
Speaker 4 (33:09):
So perseverance absolutely matters, and you need to stick with
it up until what's called your affordable loss, which I
could talk about, but a really important thing which I
could say about your son, and I could talk about
the early days of lending Tree, particularly in the early
days is integrity because when you're doing a deal with
(33:30):
somebody else, whatever it is, they're relying on your trust.
And the earliest lenders on lending Tree had to rely
on the fact that we weren't going to give them
a bad deal, that we were going to deliver them
customers and they were going to actually make money. And
we said, I always say, we want to do well
when our customers do well, when lenders do well, and
(33:53):
when we do well, and the intersection of that is
when you can actually do it. But there were twenty
companies like lending Tree who fell away, many of them
because they were distrustful with their clients.
Speaker 1 (34:07):
So you have to be a person of integrity. And
that word integrity is often overused, but what it really
means is your life is totally integrated. That you are
the same person publicly and privately. You're the same person
with your words and your deeds. You are the same
person that anybody would want to know, no matter whenever
they would meet you.
Speaker 4 (34:27):
Yes, And so that's so now I've learned something today
which is great, and I call that authenticity. And I've
always said, like, whoever you are, be authentic. And if
you're an authentic wing nut. Be an authentic wing nut.
If you're authentically intelligent, be authentically intelligent. But don't fake it.
Don't fake whatever you are, whoever you are, because you
(34:50):
are who you are, and you can own it and
you can acknowledge it. Acknowledge your weaknesses, move on, get better,
forgive people, have people forgive you, forgive yourself, and you know,
keep walking through this life and doing the best you can.
Speaker 1 (35:07):
You keep talking about forgiveness. That keeps being a theme
that I hear from you as we talk and get
to know one another more and more, and you talk
about forgiving yourself, receiving God's forgiveness for you, and then
continuing to move forward. Talk a little bit more dug
about forgiveness because that seems to be at the heart
of your faith. It certainly is mine as well.
Speaker 4 (35:29):
I think, even if you're not talking to somebody I have.
I draw this this two by two matrix that I
have if you could think about it and on the
and it basically is performance and how much they fit
in your culture. Why access being culture exact is being performance.
(35:51):
And sometimes in the lower left, for example, you have
people who don't care about you and aren't good friends
or ouses or employees, et cetera, et cetera. And you
have to be able to forgive. And then you have
people in the upper right that are still going to
sometimes you know, not be right in your life, and
(36:13):
you have to forgive them too. The power of forgiveness
for me is it's it's not only for the person
you're forgiving. I think it's more important for yourself to
be able to let that bitterness go and move on.
Because what is the purpose of going tomorrow to be bitter?
If you did something to me right now that you
(36:35):
know made me angry and I forgave you, how's it
going to benefit me When I drive out of here
and you know I'm bitter at David Chadwick, I want
to Uh, I would want to forgive you and move
on with my life. And it would make us, It
would bring us closer.
Speaker 1 (36:50):
Yeah, it should, And that's what happens when forgiveness is
practiced rightly. It leads to reconciliation, which is what God
would wive out. But you know what bitterness is like
drinking arsenic and expecting the other person to die. It's crazy.
It is it eat your own heart up right and
true forgiveness I think is giving up my right to retaliate.
Speaker 4 (37:13):
Yes, and it's very, very, very difficult, and.
Speaker 1 (37:18):
It's not our human nature. We want to retaliate, We
want to get even, we want justice to happen to
other people. We want mercy for ourselves, but we want
justice to happen to other people.
Speaker 4 (37:27):
Yes, it's the you know I learned last week, it's
the chemicals in your brain that are causing certain reactions.
And whether it's the chemicals or the devil, it doesn't
You can't. You have to give up the ability to retaliate.
And you basically need to think about Jesus and when
you think about the forgiveness that he gave and then
(37:48):
he went on the that he hung on the cross,
and when I think when times are tough, and I think,
this is what that guy did for me, my friend Jesus,
How the heck can I be mad? How can I
not forgive? How can I not forgive a bad deal
or something that happened in my life?
Speaker 1 (38:08):
The love that you extend others is greatly attached to
the love that you know from him. And Doug, thank
you for being on the show today. It sounds like
that your life is moving forward. I pray for the
best for you, for Megan, your children, for Lending Tree
to continue to have a great impact on our community
and help make Charlotte all that it can be.
Speaker 3 (38:27):
Thank you very much. It's been great to be here
today and everyone.
Speaker 1 (38:29):
Let me close the program the way I close it
every single week. Hey, love God and love your neighbor.
If you'll just do those two things, you have a
lifetime's worth of work to do. I'm David Chadwick, This
News eleven, ten ninety nine and three WVT. I'll talk
with you all next week.
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