And good evening.

You've got More Than Money, you've got Gene Dickison, your host, your personal financial adviser for the next half hour, giving you as much good information as we possibly can in these challenging times.

Challenging times, indeed, but it calls for us to be cautious and optimistic at the same time.

We've been sharing with you our counsel, our advice as to how best to meet these challenging times.

One, number one, be creative, find different ways to do the things that you love to do, doing differently, but still do them, connect with the people that you really care about.

Number two, you've got to be courageous.

You've got to step out.

You've got to absolutely meet this challenge with everything that you've got.

That's how our country is going to rebound.

That's how the world's going to rebound.

I think you're going to find that's going to be a real advantage.

And number three, it sounds so simple, but I encourage you to be courteous, be nice to people as you move about.

It's not a difficult thing to do.

I know there are challenging times.

I know there are challenging people.

I know that on occasion I be the challenging person.

So please be courteous with me when I'm not being as thoughtful as I should be.

And with everybody around you, I think that's going to give us a real opportunity as we go through the next months, hopefully with vaccines and recovery, to bring us to a point where we are all back to whatever the word normal will mean in our near term future.

Folks, as you know on our More Than Money American Story segment, we like to bring interesting individuals to our studio and get a little look into what brought them to where they are in their lives today.

We have a very special guest this evening from a company that you will recognize instantaneously, whether you're from the Lehigh Valley, Nazareth, or whether you're from coast to coast or you're in England sitting in on a jam session with Paul McCartney or Eric Clapton.

You're going to know the name CF Martin.

We welcome Chris Martin.

- Thank you, Gene.

Nice to be here.

- Thanks for being here.

We are very, very excited to have a little opportunity to share some ideas.

You and I are of an age.

- Yeah.

Yeah.

- Our company is one generation old.

- Your company is... - Six.

- Goodness.

- And there's another Martin in the wings.

Now we'll see.

My daughter Claire is only 16.

- So there's time yet.

- Time for her to make a lot - of different decisions.

- Right.

- 1833, if I'm remembering correctly.

- Started in the United States.

CF learned guitar building in Austria before that.

So he came to the New World knowing what he wanted to do and he knew how to do it.

- So, CF, are you a CF?

- I am.

There were for whatever reason four CFs and two Franks.

I don't know why.

Maybe we should have all been CFs.

- It's one of life's great mysteries.

So six generations, perhaps a seventh, that'd be kind of interesting.

A couple of weeks ago, we had a chance to talk to two - of the Yuengling daughters.

- Oh, sure.

- And Yuengling and Sons is now run by four women.

- I know.

It's fantastic.

- And maybe Claire, has she shown interest?

- She's musical, which is a good thing.

She went to Swain, and Swain focuses on music in the arts.

Now she's at Moravian.

It's a challenge right now because music is challenged because of... You were talking earlier about the environment - we're living in.

- Of course.

- So it's more making music individually than in a group.

She's accepting of the fact that she is a Martin.

I think there was this initial like, oh, no, no, no, that's Daddy's thing.

But now she's like, we'll see.

- She's your only child.

- And her middle name is Frances.

So if you just dissect that, she is a CF Martin.

- Fantastic.

Somebody thought about that.

Somebody thought about that.

The CF Martin story has been told in lots of ways, in lots of different venues.

And it's a fascinating story.

Don't get me wrong.

- We don't have enough time.

- No, of course not.

If you scratch the surface, we're talking about a documentary of a two or three hour level.

I have two CF Martin Company questions.

And I have questions for Chris Martin.

Are there any original CF Martin guitars that survived?

- There are.

What we don't know about CF's early career is how much of the work he did just by himself or how much of the work did he do with a helper or two.

So I think it's probably fair to say very early in his career, he made them by himself.

But part of the magic of the company is being able to take that function of making a guitar apart.

And having different people become experts at building part of a guitar.

And that's how we build guitars today.

- So the secret sauce is that there is no one person.

It is a group of people.

- Some like doing one job.

Some like doing multiple jobs.

Ideally, we would like you to learn a couple of jobs - in your department.

- Sure.

- So you can backfill if someone is out for a reason.

- How many employees in our Nazareth facility?

- in Nazareth, about 500.

- Wow!

- And also, we were talking earlier, we have a facility in a little town called Navojoa, which is in the state of Sonora in Mexico.

And we have 500 employees there also.

- Goodness.

So massive company from a young man, from one person in Germany saying, sweetheart, get on the boat.

- We're off.

- With a son and a daughter.

- Goodness.

- Yeah.

- In a boat probably the size of this desk.

Talk about courage.

- And then coming to New York City at a time when New York was just this teeming, you know, mass of people coming from Europe.

They stayed there for 1833 until 1839.

My ancestors, Mr. and Mrs. Martin, had some friends who lived in the Lehigh Valley and they came out to visit and it reminded them of Germany.

- Oh, fantastic.

- And that's why they moved to the Lehigh Valley.

- So that's how we got blessed.

So a little a little good fortune.

- Right.

Back then, people spoke German.

They cooked German food.

They would talk about at Christmas how they would celebrate Christmas, just like we did in the old country.

And they just they felt more comfortable here than New York City.

- And it's a shame it didn't actually work out for them.

- Yeah, right.

- Kidding!

- Well, I do wish they had kept the building in New York.

- A different story.

Lots of famous musicians played Martin guitars and the names go on and on.

I mean, once you start with Clapton, you can go - anywhere that you want.

- Yeah.

- Any that you would pick out and go that's my favorite, that's the musician that when he plays the Martin, my heart sings?

- You know, for me, it's not so much about the individual artist.

What I really appreciate is when someone takes a Martin guitar and they're an accomplished singer songwriter and they don't embellish it too much, that there's just something about a voice and a guitar, you don't need a lot of extra stuff.

And so the more orchestration they add, the less interested I personally am in what the artist is trying to say through their music.

That's just me.

- And of course, Clapton, when he does Unplugged.

- So that's an interesting story.

I don't want to I want to make this endless.

But my dad joined the business the year I was born, 1955, catches the folk boom.

- Right.

- Perfect.

- Right up through the mid 60s.

And instead of the folk boom going away, folk music meets rock and roll.

And we've got folk rock all the way through the 60s into the 70s.

Remember the Eagles?

- Of course!

- They were sort of the last - of the folk rock bands.

- Sure, of course.

- And then what happened was people's interest in music moved over to disco, and the digital sampling keyboard became very popular, so the acoustic guitar business dropped off quite dramatically.

My dad retired.

He moved to Florida.

My grandfather reasserted himself, running the business.

I'm back from college, working, but still young.

Then my grandfather passed away.

I was asked to take over and I was scared to death and business was tough.

It was just really tough.

And then MTV Unplugged happened.

Thank goodness.

- Providential.

Meant to be.

- Yeah, maybe.

Well, they talk about how music is cyclical and it was probably time people were like, oh yeah, I forgot how cool the acoustic guitar was.

I got to go rediscover it.

- At the bottom, how many guitars were you making a year.

- OK, so let's talk about the top.

Towards the end of my dad's career, about 23,000 Martin guitars.

At the bottom, two years later, 3,000.

- Oh!

- Yeah, yeah.

- And now, today?

- OK, so as you might imagine, last spring I became quite concerned about the Martin guitar business when the governor said, you're not essential.

Now, I might argue that music is essential, but we'll leave it at that.

And so I thought, oh, my gosh, the business is being closed.

We don't know when we'll ever reopen.

So this is going to be a catastrophe.

It turns out that people wanted to play the guitar when they were stuck at home.

- What a beautiful thing.

- We're on overtime and we're hiring.

- Wow!

- I know!

- Fantastic, fantastic.

- Well, we talked about Claire.

- Yeah.

- The latest CF Martin.

You grew up a Martin.

Was it was it assumed when you were growing up that you would join the business and be the next CF Martin?

- You would think that.

Now there's a lot of stories.

I'm a bit of a student of family businesses just because.

I get a wonderful magazine called Family Business.

And one of the stories that you hear often is the next heir apparent joins the business reluctantly, right?

Sure.

And my parents got divorced when I was three.

And I went and lived with my mom.

I would come back to Nazareth in the summer for a week or two and generally stay with my grandparents, Poppy Martin and Daisy, and I would see my dad, my dad and I had an interesting relationship, but my grandfather mentored me.

And he saw, OK, Chris is potentially the next Martin and I began to show interest, but it took me a while.

It really did.

I had planned, growing up with my mom, I had an interest in zoology, marine biology.

I was going to apply to the University of Miami and study marine biology.

And a friend of my dad's who had a music store in California had come to visit.

And he said, What are you going to do?

I'm going to go study marine biology.

He said, you're not going to join the family business?

I said, I don't know.

I don't know much about it.

He said, Yeah, you probably don't because you didn't grow up here.

Why don't you come to California?

You can go to college at UCLA and I'll give you a job at my music store.

- Providence!

Providence.

- I head out to L.A., UCLA takes me, I'm in the music store and Fred, he's watching me and he goes, Chris?

You don't know what you're talking about, do you?

I go, Fred, I told you that I don't know anything about the family business.

He's like, Oh, I thought you knew something.

He said, All right, you're not good on the sales floor.

Why don't you go out back and help John Carruthers repair Martin guitars?

And John was very gracious, and after a while, John said, Chris, you're not a very good guitar repairman.

- Oh, my goodness" - So I quit college, came back, lived with my grandfather and worked in the shop and got a sense of how a Martin guitar was made, and that's when it clicked.

Yeah.

- Your grandfather was obviously an influential person in your life.

How would you describe your relationship with him?

Well, let me also say influential in the Lehigh Valley, very involved.

He was on the board at St. Luke's.

He helped make sure there was a library in Nazareth, you know, things that were important to him beyond just running this family business.

But the only regret I have now is I have so many questions I forgot to ask him.

That's my biggest regret, if I had only remembered then to ask him the question I thought of yesterday.

- The dynamic of you stepping in, your father had resigned.

You had an interesting relationship with your dad.

You've got this pretty firm connection with your grandfather and you're stepping in.

That's not a recipe for success.

- One of the biggest challenges for me at that time was inheriting my father's management team.

- Oh, OK. - So his team was still there, but he wasn't, and that was interesting, there were some interesting times when, you know, people have, you know, executive kind of jockeying for position and things like that.

It took a while for people to kind of realize it's like, oh, yeah, his name's on the door.

- And most of those guys, men, women, whatever, were of your father's age.

- 20 years older.

Sure.

- Looking at this kid and going, Hm... - Yeah.

And the board had a lot of confidence in me.

That helped.

And then one of the things that I noticed towards the end of my dad's career, there was so much going on.

He had made four acquisitions.

One was fabulous.

He bought a guitar string company.

The other three were disasters.

And with business going down, and Mad Men, remember that?

- Of course!

- There was a little bit of Mad Men going on around the office over lunch.

And it was...

The quality of the Martin guitars had slipped just a little bit, but it was noticeable to people that really knew how good we could be.

And that was one of the first things I tried to impress upon my colleagues was, look, we've got to make great guitars every time, and that actually resonated out in the shop because the shop saw, hey, Frank's on his way to retirement, we've got these acquisitions that aren't working.

The business is going down.

Is this thing going to implode?

And when I said focus on quality, everyone's like, that's who we are.

- Because nobody wants to focus on quality in the short term.

If you're focusing on quality, it's because you want to build a product that everybody's proud of, that everybody's excited about putting out the front door, that they know that somebody that appreciates the fine instrument is going to pick it up and go, it's a Martin!

So you connected with, for a lack of a better term, the craftsman side.

- And I just brought us back to where we deserved to be.

We had slipped.

That happens, you know.

- Well, most family businesses don't make it beyond two generations, so six is unheard.

Are there other companies that you're in contact with around the country that are six generations plus or minus?

- So once in a while, I'll go to a family business conference.

- Sure.

- And they've shortened it up.

Gen. You're gen one.

So there's the audience and there's the presenter.

All right.

So gen one.

Well, gen one would be a founder.

And so maybe you have someone who actually they're older, they founded a business.

The kids might want to join it.

So right there at the conference, gen one.

Gen two?

Well, gen two's that second generation that is going to make or break it.

A bunch of people in the audience raise their hand.

Gen three, you know, maybe 30 people, gen four, half a dozen people, gen five, maybe nobody.

They go, gen six, and I'm there going, me, I'm sixth generation.

There are some and some are like family farms, things like that.

- Sure.

Yeah.

Yuengling is older than Martin by a year or two.

- Bixler has got to be there.

- Bixler, sure.

- It's got to be in there somewhere.

You mentioned that your regret is that you didn't ask your grandfather all the questions that you wanted to ask.

You must have asked a few.

What advice did he give you that that gave you maybe just a little bit of an edge when you came in?

- I would say the thing, and it got reinforced in college and it's worked for me personally, is to recognize and take care of my coworkers.

And so my funny story, and people, they have to think about this for a minute.

As I'm moving towards retirement, I have been, particularly back during a normal work week, where these are not normal times, so let's go back.

A year ago, I would take Fridays off.

Easing myself into retirement.

And so I would tell the story, I said, you know, I'm OK if I took Friday off and I drive by the plant or I have to come in for some reason and the parking lot is full and the factory's running and you can smell the lacquer and people are coming to visit.

And the UPS truck is showing up to take guitars all around the world.

But if I came to work on a Friday and I was the only person there, that's a bad day for me because I cannot make a guitar.

I can't do it.

I'm a klutz with a chisel.

- So is it your guitar playing ability that...?

- Oh, I'm even a worse guitar player.

- So we can't make it.

- I can't play.

I'm the GM executive that gets chauffeured to work, but I'm surrounded by people that love to make guitars and love to play them.

- You anticipated my next question.

The people that you've got surrounding you.

Is there anybody that's still there from when you took over?

- Two or three people.

Two or three people, yeah, just in the past five or ten years, a bunch of my age peers have, and I'm planning on retiring as CEO next summer and continuing in a new role that is going to be called executive chairman.

And the reason I'm doing that is I could just be chairman, but I'm still going to be the owner, I thought let me have some attachment to the company rather than being a lot of times the chair as an independent person.

I'm dependent on the company.

I still want to be Mr. Martin.

When we can travel, I want to go back and travel and I love telling the Martin story.

When I can, I go all over the world and tell the story.

- When you tell it, it's contagious.

- Yeah.

I learned this years ago from a salesman who said, I want you to go with me.

And we went on a long trip to Asia and he would tell the story.

So you would meet the distributor.

We'd go to a good music store and they would have an event in the evening.

And we invite all the customers and potential customers and press and then later real road warrior reps.

They would tell the story and I would watch.

He's such a good storyteller.

And we're about a week into the trip and we're getting set up in a music store somewhere in Australia or whatever.

And he goes, Tonight's your night.

I said, What do you mean?

He goes, You're telling the story tonight, you saw me, you know the story.

I go, I've never done this.

He goes, Yeah, you'll be pretty good at it because you're Mr. Martin.

And it's like, you're right.

- And people connect, they want that connection.

A product, a tangible item has limited appeal.

There's no warmth to it.

There's no heartbeat, there's no blood flowing.

But when you connect it to the story... - That's why we give tours, which is right now, you know.

- My daughters were there when they were in the Girl Scouts.

- Because then people, you get them about halfway through the tour and they're looking around.

They go, All right, I get it.

Now I know why they're so expensive.

- Oh, without a doubt.

And why they're so darn good.

- So good.

- So darn good.

- The people that you aligned yourself with during this last 40 year journey, one or two of those stick out at you as if I didn't have him, if I didn't have her, this would have been a far different story.

- Sure.

The first person that comes to many people's minds, particularly here in the Lehigh Valley, is my good friend Dick Boak.

Dick joined us.

He was building guitars on his own.

He was teaching and building guitars, living in Bethlehem and coming up to the factory and taking wood that we were throwing away.

Right?

And the story, he tells us, he's dumpster diving for wood.

And Harvey Samuels is about to dump some wood in the dumpster.

And he goes, Oh, and Harvey goes, oh, Jesus, there's a person in there.

So Dick engages him in a conversation.

What are you doing?

I make guitars at home and I'm stealing your wood.

You can steal it.

We're throwing it away.

And he goes well, what do you do for a living?

Well, I'm an artist.

Oh, what kind?

I do technical.

I can do technical drafting.

Harvey goes, you know, we're looking for a draftsman.

Dick gets hired and his career blossomed from after that.

My good friend Debbie Karlowitch.

Debbie and I were hired the same day, the same month, the same year.

She just retired this year, she ran the personnel department.

And we were like this because you want to have a business run well, you have a good H.R.

department, no doubt about it.

- Without a doubt.

Good fortune, serendipity, whatever we want to call divine providence.

It's had a thread through your life.

You were going to be a marine biologist.

You meet a guy, come to California.

Grandfather.

Dick Boak.

There's just so many pieces.

My wife, Diane.

Oh, my gosh.

She'll tell you how long we were married.

She's going to go.

Chris, you could have said when you're on TV, but it's like, oh, I forgot.

Long enough.

So earlier in my career, one of my jobs was to be involved in the marketing of the Martin guitar.

And ultimately, my grandfather made me the vice president of marketing.

I wasn't qualified, but I'll take it.

And so I had to go down off the turnpike, off the Lansdale exit to meet the gentleman that did our marketing, our advertising.

He had a studio at home in a studio in Center City, Philly.

So I've got to run stuff down to him, some project.

And I'm in a hurry.

I got to go.

I don't like being late.

I'm coming down the other side of the hill on 378.

And there used to be, down where the pub is, where the little mall is now, there was just an abandoned gas station and there's two lanes, you know, the two lanes converge into one.

I got to go and I step on it.

Well, sure enough...

Pulled me over, get a ticket.

Well, every car magazine I ever read said take a hearing, take a hearing.

So I got this elaborate defense prepared, go to the hearing.

Well, the first thing I find out is that the judge is quite attractive, so that caught my eye, and the officer who gave me the ticket is related to the judge.

So now I'm thinking, oh my gosh, it's going to be like Arlo Guthrie.

And Diane, District Justice Repyneck, says, Mr. Martin, this is my cousin.

And if you want me to find another judge because you don't think I'm going to be fair...

I said let's go.

So Eddie tells his side of the story and Diane says, Mr. Martin, what do you have to say?

I said, Well, I drive with intent.

And I will admit I was in a hurry.

But there was a truck next to me and as you know, and I had drawings and little Matchbox cars and it reenacted the crime.

I said, no.

At the bottom of the hill, those two lanes converge into one.

And if I was next to the truck and we happened to hit each other, it would be mayhem.

And she started laughing and Eddie started laughing.

- It's a story worthy of laughter.

- And I thought, OK. And a couple of days later, she said, I gave you five over.

So that's a special hint here.

If you get a ticket, you want to negotiate the five over, because the officer gets credit, you pay the state some money.

No points, but...

I got a life sentence.

- But of the best type.

- Yes, and Diane's been very supportive of me.

She's on the Martin board.

She's on the Martin Foundation board.

She's involved in the community.

- Having married a Diane myself, I'll share that.

I agree.

We have a minute or so left.

- OK. - So fast forward ten years.

And your young daughter is now stepping into a leadership role at Martin.

What one piece of advice do you give her so that makes her way just a little easier?

- So I've got a bit of a story already.

And the story right now is, Mom and Dad have done a lot of planning, and I'm pretty confident you're going to inherit enough of this business to continue family control.

You don't have to be involved in the running of it if it isn't what excites you.

But you deserve a seat on the board.

And honestly, Claire, when you are ready, you can be chairman of the board.

Hire good people, hold them accountable.

It might all work out.

- Chris, thank you so much.

- What a pleasure.

- You scratch the surface.

If you haven't had the chance, you've got to embrace the Martin story, not just the CF Martin story, the corporate story, but the Chris Martin story, the Chris and Diane and Claire story.

This is fascinating and instrumental for all of us as we're facing challenges.

It might be a business challenge, might be a personal challenge.

It might be health.

It might be family.

The list goes on and on.

It doesn't really matter.

There's a divine providence at work.

No question in the life of Chris Martin and his family.

But in your life as well.

So make sure that you're making those plans and you're making that effort so that as you go forward, you get the best opportunity you possibly can to have an American story as good as Chris Martin's.

Maybe better.

If you want help along the way, all you have to do is ask.

You send me your emails, gene@askmtm.com.

It might be a question about business.

It might be a question about your investments, your retirement.

It might be a question about anything that comes to mind that you might need a little bit of guidance on.

Send it to me, gene@askmtm.com.

You might see your question on a future show of More Than Money.

Now, speaking of future shows of More Than Money, we've got so much going on.

It's a great season.

Lots of shows in the works so that you've got great information coming, great guests and great Q&A as we give you as much financial information as we can week by week as well.

So we hope that you'll rejoin us every single week with our PBS39 partnership in full bloom.

Thanks for spending part of your evening with us.

We'll see you next time on More Than Money.