This is an I-Heart podcast.

And we're back with our American stories.

And as you know, some of our favorite stories to tell are business stories, American dream stories.

And today we bring you another business story from Jim Keys.

We've already told two stories with Jim about his childhood and the story of becoming the CEO of 7-Eleven.

Today, Jim tells us the story of becoming the CEO of another company we all know and love.

Jory Cortez brings us today's story.

In 2005, Jim Keys received the Horatio Alger Award, joining the ranks of Rich DeVos,

Buzz Aldrin, Hank Aaron, and many more Americans who exemplified great virtue and perseverance.

The award was well deserved.

As you might have heard in our previous stories with Jim, he came from nothing, worked at McDonald's,

and would become the CEO of 7-Eleven and successfully brought them out of bankruptcy.

Turns out, Jim had a real talent for turning companies around. A talent needed by another company in peril,

a company that holds a special place in all of our hearts.

I started looking for similar opportunities.

I saw in Blockbuster a very similar environment.

It's hard to see that on the surface, but they had small box stores, yes, but really what they were in the business of is convenience.

So people were saying, well, the Blockbuster store is going to go away.

I never saw them as being a video rental store.

I saw them as being a convenient access to media entertainment store.

So it's in fact just another form of convenience.

I also saw the technology that was coming, wasn't quite here yet,

...