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The Doing Business in Bentonville Podcast
To create an ecosystem that connects leaders of all kinds – industry, community, student, educational, civic, investment and entrepreneurial – to help overcome Omnichannel Retail barriers through exclusive, insight-rich content.
The Doing Business in Bentonville Podcast
Ep. 132 - When Success Fails, Grace Wins
How does one go from a challenging childhood to a thriving career and a life of purpose? Join DBB as Ron Acosta, a former Walmart executive-turned-Chick-fil-A owner-operator, shares his transformative journey with host Andy Wilson.
With a career spanning 28 years at Walmart, Ron's story takes us through his remarkable transition from corporate success to a more balanced life that integrates faith and family.
He opens up about an introspective retreat in Colorado that catalyzed his personal growth and set him on a path of healing and redemption. Get ready to be inspired by Ron's unwavering resilience and the divine interventions that marked his journey.
Ron shares deeply personal stories of overcoming adversity, starting with a childhood shadowed by abandonment, racism, and abuse.
These early challenges were met with an unexpected glimmer of hope during his time at Walmart, where an encounter with Sam Walton ignited his belief in his own potential. Through faith and counseling, Ron reshaped his life's narrative, finding success and purpose in the business world and beyond.
As he recounts pivotal moments such as reconnecting with his estranged father and establishing a marriage ministry with his wife, Ron's story becomes a testament to the power of healing and redemption.
Our global reach now extends to 34 countries, thank you to our international listeners for your incredible support! As we look forward to more engaging topics and guests in 2025, we express our heartfelt gratitude to Ron Acosta for sharing his compelling journey with us.
His story of resilience and faith is both humbling and inspiring, offering valuable insights into how personal growth can strengthen not only individuals but also their families and communities.
For those eager to learn more, Ron's book "Unstoppable Grace" provides a deeper dive into his life's transformative experiences.
Well, hello everyone and welcome to Doing Business in Bentonville. My name is Andy Wilson and I'm the host today, and I'm so glad that you have joined us today. I've got such a great guest today that I can't wait for you to meet. In fact, we're just going to get into this straight away, ron Acosta, welcome to Doing Business in Bentonville. Thanks, andy, great to be here with you, sir. Well, it's great to have you. I've got to introduce this guy. He's going to tell you something about him, but first of all I've got to tell you about this. This is a great friend of mine. We worked together at Walmart for a lot of years, didn't we, ron? Yes, sir, yes sir, I mean, ron, you cannot tell any bad stories about me if I'd done some stuff at Walmart.
Speaker 2:Don't say it on me either. Don't tell any on me as well.
Speaker 1:Okay, that's the deal. No storytelling about me.
Speaker 2:All right, sounds good.
Speaker 1:Sounds good, all right, we're good. Well, let me tell you when Ron and I worked at Walmart together. There are several things I want to say about my friend up front. Number one he was one of the hardest workers I've ever met at Walmart. He was very, very focused, he did really well, he moved up to the organization and one of the things, many things, I remember about him, not only was he a hard worker, but he loved the people and people really loved him. He was a great servant leader at the company. And so, ron, thank you for that. I remember when you were running stores and districts and things like that. And so, ron, thank you for all that you did for Walmart.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you.
Speaker 1:Thank you, I really appreciate that you did a great job and you contributed. How many years did you end up? 28. 28. Okay, I thought I was going to say 30.
Speaker 2:Yeah, right at 30.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it seemed well, you did a couple more years than me, but that's, that's great. The other thing that I will say about my friend is that today he's going to share his heart with you. And he's going to share his heart with you and he's going to share very openly with you about his life. And I have thought he and I have had a few conversations prior to this podcast, and I will tell you why the more I thought about what he's going to share with you is that this is going to be.
Speaker 1:We do a lot of great things here at Doing Business in Bentonville, but this one is going to be personal. This one, he's going to pull the curtain back and talk about his life, and I'm going to tell you something that's hard for a guy to do and we don't do it enough, and he's going to share some things that could be very personal. That will be very personal. And, ron, I want to thank you for doing what you're doing. I want to thank you that you have taken this huge step to write this great book, unstoppable Grace, and you're going to talk about that book today, yes sir, yes sir. And so we want to get straight into that. And he's also a Chick-fil-A owner, owner operator and you know, and I know 99.9% of you right now are thinking about what you would be eating at Chick-fil-A. I know you are.
Speaker 1:All right. Well, Ron, let's get into this yeah yeah, we'll look for it. Yeah, let's go tell, tell people about and I guess that really I just start out why did you write this book?
Speaker 2:you know it's, it's very kind of interesting. You know, I um, I was an associate pastor for a little while and I went to this retreat it's called Sunscape, it's up in Colorado, and they did a Taylor Johnson survey on us and there was two scores that really concerned me. One was I had very little joy in my life. Now, this is, you know, not talking about happiness, this is talking about joy, right. And so, and I was very high on performance. Now, performance didn't mean in a good way, like performing arts, right, it was that I was really stuck on being number one, you know, being the best, driven, really driven, for success. But that success was taking away my joy.
Speaker 2:And so I decided to work with a counselor for a year, very personal. I remember going to visit him the first day and we were just talking and he started asking me questions about my childhood and things like that. And then I stood up and said you know his name was Tim. I said, tim, I think I'm wasting your time. I said you probably got other people that you want that are more, have more bigger problems than I do.
Speaker 2:And then he asked me he goes, well, we need to schedule you in for next week, and so that started this year long walk with him, kind of peeling back the onions of my life, and part of the process was for me to write my notes down every visit, and so those notes turned into a manuscript every visit. And so those notes turned into a manuscript, and that manuscript turned into the book Unstoppable Grace, which I've been working on for five years. We just finished it this past, just went on the market this past June, and it is. It is a story of how God intervened in my life throughout my life and showed up in so many ways to give me hope to where I'm at today. To where I'm at today.
Speaker 1:Wonderful. Well, five years to write a book, quite a journey, I'm sure in those five years you know, ron, I know in the book you talk about a lot of things here and and I think that, uh, again, which you know, you're very open to talk about this that we really get in. Let's just begin in your childhood, I know. Let's just talk about your childhood and spill the foundation there and then we can go forward from there because, um, all of us, men and women, have, many of us have had, very difficult childhoods, and I've never, I have never talked about my childhood publicly. Very few people know about my childhood and that's why I think I have related so much to this book and so share, share that with us yeah, you know I.
Speaker 2:I think the one of the things that came up in the counseling is that my kids didn't know who I was, and so the story was kind of written for them to know who their dad was, what their dad, why his, why their dad did certain things or certain quirks. Uh, there's things in this book, unfortunately, that I never shared with my wife because I was too embarrassed to share them with her, you know and so, but that started the kind of the process. So I was, you know, I was born in California, los Angeles. My father abandoned me twice when I was two years old, so I never really knew him in the beginning, and then five years old, and then then my mom decided to move to North Carolina. She met a man. I mean, she only knew him for like 30 days. We packed up in the car and we moved to North Carolina, so. So my childhood was kind of kind of.
Speaker 2:He was, my stepdad was very racist. He talked about different nationalities very poorly. Now you got to understand. I was, I'm Hispanic, and he would talk about Mexicans or Hispanics excuse me, but he would talk about that and I was sitting there going. Well, I'm Hispanic. Does he not care about me? Would he do harm to me? He was a raging alcoholic. He was a philanderer, multiple affairs, and so I kind of grew up in all this age witnessing this and my mother really taking his side to everything. I mean she wanted to support him. I know she felt she needed a man to kind of take care of her, but she would often tell me that I was not going to amount to anything that I was going to end up like my father, which I really didn't know.
Speaker 2:My father I knew from kind of stories that he was in organized crime, he was in gangs in California and he was an alcoholic as well, and he was actually also had multiple affairs of my mom when they were married. But so that kind of was constant in my life, that I wasn't going to amount to anything. And so I was in this town that was predominantly, you know, anglo, and I mean I was. I was discriminated against. I mean it was just my, my. My life felt like I wasn't going to achieve anything and I was told multiple times by counselors and coaches that I was too small, that I couldn't play sports or counselor. I couldn't go to college because my grades weren't well enough, and so I was constantly told that I wasn't going to be able to achieve. And then Walmart came about to achieve, and then Walmart came about.
Speaker 2:It was my first avenue of somebody telling me that you could be whatever you wanted to be. I remember I was with Sam Walton and we were in my old truck and we were driving down the road and first he asked me if I wanted to go to Mexico, and so I said no, I don't want to go to Mexico, sam, and, but he goes. He goes, ron, what do you want to do? And I said you know. I said I just want to grow with the company and he told me Ron. He told me Ronnie, that's my real name, is Ronnie. He said, ronnie, you can be whatever you want to in this company, and that kind of really ignited me. That's the first time anybody's ever told me something that I could achieve more. I could achieve more, and so I look back at my childhood. I failed to mention I was sexually abused when I was 13. And so there was a lot of negative things that went on in my life that I could have turned out a lot worse.
Speaker 2:In the book it talks about, there's a chapter that talks about everything that can happen to you if you come from certain types of situations, like you know, if you're from a divorced family or you're raised in an alcoholic home or if you're sexually abused. You know, I basically was the parent of my two brothers at nine years old. I was keeping my one-year-old brother when I was nine years old. That was it. I was just in the house by myself with my two brothers, so I was their caretaker and he and we looked at all these things that could have I could have become.
Speaker 2:Why didn't I become an alcoholic? Why didn't I become a drug addict? Why didn't I become a sexual addict? Why didn't I run around on my wife and have affairs? Why didn't I, you know, get divorced? Why did I succeed in the business world when everything in my childhood told me that I wasn't going to be able to? And so that's kind of where this whole book started was. You know, from the beginning of where I was at, to what God had actually opened the doors for me to be successful? Now I will tell you. At Walmart, there were some things that I think God closed the door eventually for me, cause I don't think I would have ever left, andy, I think I would have probably still be there right now.
Speaker 2:Uh, if, if, if I was allowed to because I loved the company, my identity was wrapped up into the position. I truly bled blue, as we used to say. Right and so. But I think, god, if you read the book, you'll see levers where God closed doors and then they open doors, and I think that's kind of what the book is really centered around.
Speaker 1:We know now, as you talked about your childhood, there's all these struggles, this abuse that you talked about, this very unhealthy individual that you're around, all of this addiction, all this abuse. You were in the middle of that. Yes, sir, and I know that had this, so as you grew and all this began to have a tremendous impact and struggles in your life. Correct, correct, correct, yes, you went to the counselor, so which I think that's wonderful that you did that you got help, you got something, you got professional help and again, uh, you know I'm talking to men here.
Speaker 1:Sometimes we don't do that- right and uh, we should, and hopefully it's. That's improving uh for us as men, and then uh's good. Now you're in the middle of this. How did you find? I guess you're in the middle of all these struggles, so how did you really find this healing, this redemption, this new purpose in your life, ron, talk to us about that.
Speaker 2:It's really interesting. So I talk about childhood problems, but a lot of these problems went into my adulthood too, I mean. So I was a workaholic, I was never at home. I mean, you know, we talked earlier about traveling. You know, I became a regional vice president, uh, with walmart and, and even when I was a district manager, you know I would leave you know out monday morning.
Speaker 2:I would come back till late thursday night. Friday was meetings all day Saturday. We're in meetings Sunday. I was just trying to recover to get ready for the next week. So my marriage was being torn apart. I mean, it wasn't because I had an affair with another person, I was in an affair with my career, and so there was a lot of issues that I carried into my adult years. And so, you know, there was a point where I did step away from Walmart but unfortunately, and got opened the door for Chick-fil-A, which has been tremendous, tremendous opportunity, but that the drive from Walmart didn't go away. You know, I gave my life to Christ when I was 43.
Speaker 2:So I lived a big part of my life in the desert. You know, I was just trying to do things for myself to achieve my results, and so when I left Walmart, there was a big emptiness inside me that I didn't know how to feel. I didn't know how to feel. And so there was a point where, before this counseling, I was just in a really dark place. I had some seizures and I had some medical issues and I was on some medication that kind of made it worse. And so it was in July and I, right before 4th of July, and I was just, I was, I was breaking down.
Speaker 2:I I could not control my temper, I could not control my behavior. It just got worse and worse and worse and worse and a lot of it stemmed. I was angry. I was angry with God because I felt God took Walmart away, and I was angry at everybody. I mean, that was the problem. I was angry with everybody. And so my wife and I got into this big argument and she decided she was going to leave, to go spend the 4th of July weekend with her sister. Now you remember I talked to you about abandonment. My first thought was my wife left me. When I left Walmart, I figured Walmart left me. I was abandoned by Walmart. Now I'm abandoned by my wife and all this just started spewing out.
Speaker 1:I give an analogy of like a water bottle.
Speaker 2:You know why does water? If you shake the bottle, why does water come out of the bottle? Well, the water comes out because it's in the bottle right. The agitation just makes it come to the top. So here I am, agitated and in my heart I just have this bitterness about not working at Walmart anymore and my wife had just left me. I had this vivid dream the night before where she found another guy and you know she's left me. We divorced. And the very next night I just I couldn't take it anymore. I couldn't take it anymore.
Speaker 2:And so I remember I pulled out my gun and I put it to my head and it was a nine millimeter. I racked the bullet into the round and I just felt safe and saying do it, you're better off. You know nobody loves you, nobody cares about you. You know everybody abandons you. You know you're not worth anything. You know I told you you'd never be worth anything, you know. And so I remember, I don't know, I don't know if I would ever pull the trigger, but it was at my head and my phone rang, or my cell phone went off. It just went ding and I thought I'd check it. I don't know why. I thought I'd check it, but I checked it for the last time and it was my wife and she just said I love you and everything would be okay.
Speaker 2:And I just remember I just I fell to the floor. I fell to the floor and I just cried like a baby, to where I fell asleep and I was just asking God to come back into my life I mean very similar to when I gave my life to Christ when I was 43, but now this point where I just fell to the ground and just begged God to save me and rescue me, and that really started the process of me going okay. What do I need to do to change? And one of the things I found out, you know, andy, one of the things that that when I left Walmart, it was also automatically. They were telling me to be.
Speaker 2:Use this as a a platform to tell men, hey, it's okay, it's okay, you lost this position. Don't tie your identity up in that position. Go talk about it. Go talk about how God opened the door for you at Chick-fil-A, which is all great, which was all great, but I've never grieved the loss of Walmart. I did not know that you should have to grieve, just like you. You know, when you think about the stages of grief, you think about, you know, losing a loved one, right. But I never went through the stages of grief when I lost Walmart and I had to go through that piece. I really had to walk through that piece to start that healing.
Speaker 2:You know, I read. My wife was so distraught during this time that she she Googled inspirational scriptures and it come up Ecclesiastes. Now I don't know if all of you understand what Ecclesiastes is, right, it's that book Solomon wrote. It's everything is meanliness, right. That's what. That's what the theme is. And so I had read Ecclesiastes many times. But during this healing part I read it and I heard it in such a different way, you know, I heard God say I don't want you there. This is where I want you, you're OK to be right here in the time of life, in the season that you're at. This is exactly where I want you from going through grief, reading Ecclesiastes, really walking with some true brothers. That really helped me get through this and I did get off the medication.
Speaker 2:I would tell you guys, too, that a lot of us feel that if we go on anxiety or depression medicine, it looks negative on us. You know, in my case, a lot of times I just wanted to keep my head down and keep pushing through things. But I got on depression medicine, I got on anxiety medication and that helped me get through this piece of my life. Now I'm not on it anymore, but I think too many people think, well, if I get on medication, maybe I'm not praying enough, maybe I'm not living my life right. It's okay to do things like that to help yourself get healed, and so that's kind of where the healing process took. It took. It took almost over a year for me to get through to the point where I felt joy coming back into my life.
Speaker 1:You said you didn't grieve your loss of job. Yes, but then you did. Yes, you know, I think that's very, very that's a powerful statement, because so many times we become what we do and you know, you became what you did Right, and many of us do that and there's a lot of us very guilty of that. The second thing that you, you know I thought that was you you went and got professional counseling. You began to to to move forward. You went and got, you know, got medication to help you, um, so you re began to to to grieve. That you've never done. You begin to get professional help from doctors and counseling, and that I guess the encouragement I have for all of us that are facing those kinds of issues there is help there and you rediscover sounds like you rediscovered your faith. Yes, very much.
Speaker 2:Very much.
Speaker 1:I think that's very powerful. You know this is so much about you and your book. I love the name Unstoppable Grace. It's a powerful name, but you know so many of us but you know so many of us, including me has had sexual abuse in their life. I had sexual abuse as my stepfather, my father died when I was very, very young and my mom remarried and unfortunately, she married someone that later became an alcoholic, but prior to that, sexual abused me and my sister, and it was a horrible, horrible situation, and I will tell you that that affected me most of my life.
Speaker 1:Yes, and we're, you know, and I'm, and the point is I'm making here is that you got professional help and it helps you navigate through it, along with your faith, and you can't do this by yourself, though. Men and women, you have to have help. Most of us can't because we, we don't, we just all this is new for us. We've never experienced these kinds of things before. I'm sure everyone's different when they face these kind of things, and but you found healing, you found redemption and you found purpose.
Speaker 2:Correct yes, sir.
Speaker 1:Talk about a purpose, and I know you've talked about how you navigated it. That's definitely a purpose, but then you found something else to do to your time, right? Yes, sir, yes sir, talk about that.
Speaker 2:You know, I think there's two big pieces right. I think that Chick-fil-A kind of offered me an opportunity to bring God to work with me. I had never, you know, not. You know, in Mr Walton's book you know he talked about, you know, going into town, being part of the community, finding the church to go to and and and and I know it was Mr Sam was God centered. But this was a place where I could actually bring God to work with me, and so it, with the inspiration of working with younger kids and and and things like that, to to be a true shepherd, uh, and to lead them with it was been tremendous for me in my faith. One of the things that really came about of all this is, like I told you, I struggled with my marriage. I never really had a good example of what a marriage was Like. I said when I was at Walmart my marriage was second place. I know God took away Walmart from me because he knew my marriage would not have been saved if I'd have stayed at Walmart.
Speaker 1:And.
Speaker 2:I'm not. It's nothing against Walmart, it's just the way I was built the way I was working.
Speaker 2:You know I started journaling when I was in 2004,. Started journaling and the first journal entry I ever put in my book was God saved my marriage. That was the first entry I ever put and I did put this. Hope this don't offend anybody, but I said God helped me find another career because I knew it was such a struggle. Now God did do both. Now I didn't want him to do the career piece, so you got to be careful sometimes what you ask for right.
Speaker 2:But he did both, which kind of led my wife and I to open up a marriage ministry and we did it a big scale at the church.
Speaker 2:We did two retreats a year with about 30 couples a piece, and then now we've narrowed down to where we do three intense couples every other month and it's very intense. It's couples that are really struggling unverged divorce and damage in their marriage. But God has really kind of gave us this lane to pour into these couples. Things that we struggled with, that we really had challenges with, that we can share with couples to help save them, because I do truly believe that marriage is one where you do see God at right. That's just the true image of, of God's relationship and love for us, but it's also the of the future of our kids and and, and I think that marriage is so important that it becomes a priority, and so so that's kind of where God has led me. I mean, you know, god offered me the ability to work at Chick-fil-A, which is is is great, but it also has given me the liberty and the time to be able to to focus on, on marriages and help other couples be successful.
Speaker 1:Well, that's wonderful. You know, the great thing about your story is that it's ending well. Yes, and that's wonderful. And, ron, I want to thank you for sharing so openly about your struggles and your family and sharing about the really hard issues that happen in your life. Hearing about the really hard issues that happen in your life, but yet what a message of hope that you have shared. I mean, your message is really about hope and resilience and you've done that. You're an example of that and I hope that our audience that's listening to this and doing this I hope they're encouraged by what you're sharing. And also, I want you to talk about your where you can reach your book, and you said you're still in the ministry and even if people wanted to reach out to you, if you're, if you feel comfortable, sharing that, I want to share one more message of hope, if I, if I can Sure.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:You know, one of the things that I had mentioned to you that my dad abandoned me when I was really young, at age 13, my mother, for some reason, told, told, uh, told me my father had passed away. Well, in 2009, I found out he was alive. So after 35 years, I found that he was still alive. In 2012, I talked to him for the first time and in 2018, I met him again. And so, 50 years later, god allowed me to meet my father, and you know a lot of apprehension when I first met him. But when I seen this man, he asked me two questions. He said can I call you son and will you call me dad? And it kind of just shrunk my heart. I mean, I felt God's grace just pour over me that he would allow me to meet my father Now he was my, you know my godly father was always there for me, but he allowed me to meet my earthly father.
Speaker 2:You know, over that year, my dad passed away in 2019. I was able to bring my father to Christ. I was actually in a hospital ICU room and brought him to Christ and baptized him in the ICU that he was in, in the ICU that he was in, and then in actually December of 2019, I had my hand on his chest when he stepped into heaven. And so God just full circled me to a point where he just allowed me to meet a man that I truly wanted to meet all my life and be there for him in his last days, in his last breath, and know that he's going to be in heaven and know that I'll see him again someday. It was just tremendous, tremendous.
Speaker 2:I feel a blessing that God has poured into me, and so all that's in the book it is unstoppable grace there's. It is Unstoppable Grace. There's a there's a picture of it If you get it at Amazon. I do have a website it's ronacostacom where you can sign up for my monthly newsletter. It also has avenues of different things that if you're interested in the marriage ministry or you know you would prefer me to come speak at some organization or do one-on-one mentoring. It's available but, ronacostacom, you can find out more about the book, more about my life, and connect in community with me as we go forward in this journey.
Speaker 1:Well, ron, thank you so much for being my guest this morning. It's been wonderful to hear your story. I'm so proud, I'm proud of you, I'm proud of your family, proud of what you have accomplished in your life. So, thank you. It's just a pleasure that I have known you all these years and that we have reconnected Now for all of our viewers and listeners. We're going to have all this information on our website also. It's dbbnwacom. We'll have that on all of our social media platforms where you're listening or watching this platform, and you can go to our website also and see and find all that information that Ron has talked about. Or you can definitely go straight to Ron Acosta, as he talked about, and go buy his book. Okay, right, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:I hope you enjoy it. Give me feedback when you read it, because it's's a it's, it's a work of love. It's truly a work of love and hope and grace.
Speaker 1:So it's wonderful. Well, ron, again, thank you, my friend, it's been a pleasure talking to you. Yeah, I'm so grateful, I'm so grateful for having you on on our on our podcast today and I want to let's keep. Let's keep in touch.
Speaker 2:Yes, sir andy yes, sir, I appreciate it. Good to see you, sir, good to see you I want to thank our viewers and listeners.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much, uh, also all of you. I want to not only thank you for listening, but thank you for for your encouragement. I, you know, drop me a lot anytime on our website, um, and you have any suggestions? Uh, because you have done such a great job viewing and listening to her and watching our podcast. We are now viewed in 34 countries. Thank you for that. It's very humbling to know that so many of our friends and people watch us around the world. So, thank you. Also. We have such a great year in 2025 that will be so many great podcasts. I mean, it's going to be such a great year and I'm so excited about 2025 and all the topics we're going to bring and the wonderful guests that we'll be having on our show. Thank you, ron Acosta. Again, thank you, my friend, it's been such a pleasure.
Speaker 2:Thank you Best to you and your family. God bless, god bless.