Entrepreneurs: The Anatomy of...

Speaker Name: Ann Lewallen Spencer
Speaker Title: Chairman, President and CEO
Speaker Company: Goody's Pharmaceuticals

Ann Lewallen SpencerGood afternoon everybody; I'm delighted to be here. I understand the Chancellor had to be away this afternoon, but I wanted to be sure and thank him for the dinner at his home last night. I also want to thank Dean Peacock, Harlan and Frankie Boyles, Dr. Durham and Jim Broyhill for inviting me here today. I have to tell you though after reading the list of the people who have been your distinguished lecturers and speakers before me, I am very humble and I'm scared to death.

I heard Tom Lambeth, a dear friend for whom I have great respect, speak at lunch. Tom, for a minute there, I thought you were traveling with Charles Kuralt when you were describing "The Best and the Worst" of North Carolina. A word one of my sons-in-law taught me several years back is "ineffable." Do all of you know what ineffable means? I did not so I looked it up. Ineffable is something that is a love or a joy that you cannot describe and put into words and that's what I feel about North Carolina.

I started to say I feel very humble and nervous up here. It reminds me of a few years ago when I was a junior at Salem Academy. When you're at the Academy, every junior and every senior has to give what they call a chapel talk on the stage and each time they had three students in alphabetical order who gave the talk. (By the way, I have to tell you why I went to Salem Academy. I went to public school for ten years, nothing against the public schools, but my parents realized I had spent ten years majoring in people instead of books, so they decided they'd better send me to Salem Academy to teach me how to study and it worked--it helped get me in Chapel Hill). The day I was to give my first chapel talk, nervous and scared to death again, in alphabetical order was first a girl named James, then a girl named King, and then my name Lewallen. As I sat on the stage trying to listen to them and remember what I was going to say, the second young lady got up and was giving her speech and, I promise you this is the truth, her skirt and knees were shaking. Well, you can imagine how that affected me! You wouldn't believe it but those two girls turned out to be honor graduates of my class and there I was up there with them. So you know how I feel today following these other distinguished speakers and the Dean kept saying this was going to be the best ever. It won't be the best, but it'll be different!

My topic today is "Entrepreneurs: The Anatomy of..." First, I would like to say, I'm no expert, but business trends, this day and time, are changing. A few years back, when all the big buyouts started happening, I thought, what's going on, there's something that's not right here. We all know what's gone on since then. Many big businesses have bought out each other and they're all downsizing. I remember as a little girl when my mother told me, and I don't know whether it's because it was the early years after the Depression, but she used to say, "Ann, just remember, if you keep something long enough, it always comes back in style." That's what has happened; entrepreneurship is back in style.

I think entrepreneurship has played a tremendous part in our businesses in North Carolina over the years. A lot of them were entrepreneurs who started out small. They were families and some of them have continued and are still family businesses today. I think there's a definite place in our future for the role of entrepreneurs, because with all the downsizing in companies, I get letters every day from engineers, former vice presidents, etc. from Canada, the United States, even the Pacific Islands, people looking for jobs. I think many of these will start new businesses. In my opinion, entrepreneurship is very, very important in our future.

I'd like to give you the definition of an entrepreneur from the dictionary which says that an entrepreneur is one who organizes, manages, and assumes the risk of business or enterprise. I would like to add to that in my own words. I think an entrepreneur needs to be a positive thinking person, a self-confident and enthusiastic person, and a hard worker with a good attitude. I said to a class this morning, "attitude, attitude, attitude" is most important and even more important is integrity. To me that's what it requires. I might get in trouble today if I start talking about some businesses in North Carolina that were started by entrepreneurs. So if I leave out one of yours, I apologize.

First, I'm going to start down east. You know eastern North Carolina is mostly agricultural, and there has been a lot of cotton and tobacco grown there. And, of course, we know what's happened to most of those businesses. A great deal of hog raising has taken over. There's a man down east named Felix Harvey who is a giant. He's in the cotton gin business, among many other things he has his fingers in. Then in Raleigh is The News and Observer which is now in the third generation or maybe even the fourth generation of a family business. The News and Observer can be quite controversial as all media can (forgive me for saying so). Also down east is a business called the Hackney Brothers which makes refrigerated body trucks; that's a family business that's in the third generation. These businesses were all started by entrepreneurs in a small way and have grown and grown. Then there is Centura Bank down in Rocky Mount (and Mr. Sewell from Centura is here today) and also Hardee's was started in Rocky Mount. Another big one is Pepsi Cola or PepsiCo which started in eastern North Carolina.

Now I'm going to move up to the piedmont part of North Carolina--that's where I'm from and is the area I know the best. I was shocked when I started thinking about all the businesses that were started in a small way by entrepreneurs, a lot of which are still family businesses today. There is Burlington Mills and I saw someone here today from Burlington Mills, so I'm glad I mentioned Burlington which was started by Spencer Love. Glen Raven Mills is still owned and operated by the Gant family of Burlington. There is Cone Mills in Greensboro which was started by the Herman Cone family. Jefferson Pilot was started by the Julian Price family. Another person who still today is one of the finest entrepreneurs in North Carolina is a gentleman named Dalton McMichael. He has started many yarn companies over the years along with Mr. William Armfield from Greensboro and Billy Armfield, Jr. They sold out to Unify about two years ago but, at age 81, Dalton McMichael has just built a new plant. He is an amazing man.

In Winston-Salem, of course, there is R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company which has been one of our godfathers for many years. Also in Winston were Hanes Hosiery and Hanes Knitting, which are now Sara Lee. There is also Quality Oil Company which was started by Mr. Bert Bennett, Sr. who was my father's partner in the candy and wholesale tobacco business for many years. Quality Oil is still in the third generation as a family business. Then there is Krispy Kreme. I know all you students and everybody else knows about Krispy Kreme. When I was a teenager, Krispy Kreme was started down on South Main Street almost across from Salem College in just a little bitty place. Of course, it has grown and grown and the family that owned it has now sold it to a family from Alabama. Today they are really working and continuing to grow the business. Those are just a few of the businesses in the piedmont area that have been started by entrepreneurs.

Now let's move to the Charlotte area. There is Springs Mills in Fort Mill. Colonel Eli Springs was famous in the textile industry and that has been a family business for many years. Harris-Teeter, in Charlotte, was started by Mr. Teeter and a Mr. Bill Harris. Mr. Harris had one grocery store I understand and he probably came from somewhere up deep in the mountains. I don't know whether anybody can verify that or not. But look at Harris-Teeter today. The Dixons in Charlotte bought Harris-Teeter and merged it with a brokerage business of theirs and American Efrid Yarning Mills that they owned also. It is now called Ruddick Corporation. That is still a family business and is still going strong. They're now a global business.

Now we get to your section of the country in the western part of North Carolina. We have the Biltmore companies in Asheville. The Cecil family owns Biltmore and of course he was related to the Vanderbilts. So the Biltmore House stayed in the family too. I'm sure you've probably all been there--they have a winery and farms, and it's a wonderful thing for North Carolina.

We have another wonderful entrepreneur with us today, an environmentalist, and that is Hugh Morton from Grandfather Mountain. He's done a tremendous amount for the western part of North Carolina and for the whole state. Thank you, Mr. Morton.

Next I want to mention Jim Broyhill, from Broyhill Furniture. His uncle started Broyhill Furniture in 1913 and then Jim's father and the rest of his family stayed in it for many, many years and helped the business grow. Look how successful they were and what they've done. Look what you've got on this campus as a result of the contributions of the Broyhills. Thank you, Jim. By the way, Jim told me that many of the furniture companies that you hear about in our area, including Broyhill Basset Walker in Thomasville and Basset Walker in Virginia were all begun by entrepreneurs who started in the lumber business.

Down in the foothills is Spindale Mills in Spindale. Another company you may not be as familiar with, but I am close to the people involved, so I have to tell about it. Also in the foothills, in Rutherfordton is the Tanner Companies. Tanner originally started in the 1930s as the Doncaster Shirt and Collar Company. During World War II they made scarfs for the Navy. In about 1951 Mr. Tanner died. He had three sons who at that time were just finishing college or getting out of the service. When they came home, they, along with their mother Millie Tanner, continued the business. Millie was a wonderful lady; she had been on stage in Broadway and was a most charming person. She started drawing and designing dresses and they started with Doncaster representatives in homes selling the dresses. They continued to grow that business and then they started Tanner of North Carolina, a line of ladies dresses and suits and built a plant in Rutherfordton. I didn't get any statistics but I would say they employ around 800 people in their plant. They also own a chain of Tanner Outlet stores. Other than that they have several thousand Doncaster representatives all over the United States now selling these clothes.

Now I would like to turn to three companies that were all started, so to speak, in a corner drugstore. Coca-Cola is not a North Carolina company, of course, but it is one of those. Have any of you ever been to the World of Coca-Cola, the new museum they built in Atlanta? If you go to Atlanta, it's down next to the Underground. Coca-Cola was started by a Mr. Jacobs, owner of Jacobs Drug Store in Atlanta. He had the formula for the Coca-Cola, but he was not a businessman, so he sold part of it to Mr. Candler, also of Atlanta. Mr. Candler put it on the map in the United States but then Mr. Robert Woodruff came into the picture. He made Coca-Cola internationally famous. Today, it is the number one soda pop and it is sold, of course, all over the world. The World of Coca-Cola is basically a museum of the history of Coca-Cola. You end up in there with different Coca-Cola flavors from all over the world.

A North Carolina business that started in a corner drugstore is Vicks. Surely all of you have heard of Vicks Vaporub, Vicks Nosedrops and Vicks Coughdrops! There was a Mr. Lunsford Richardson who wanted to be a doctor but couldn't afford that much of an education. However, he did attend Davidson College for three years and became a chemist. He went back to his home in Selma, North Carolina, and opened a drugstore. He was experimenting with mentholatum and eucalyptus along with oriental sources. One winter his children had the croup (some of you young people probably don't know what the croup is--the croup is a chest cold with a deep cough), so he used some of his formula on their chests and it didn't cure but it seemed to relieve them. He started thinking about it and decided he was going to do more with his formula. He sold everything he had, his drugstore, the plantation home in Selma, and moved to Greensboro. He opened a plant and started manufacturing Vicks Vaporub. Up until that time people had used what they called homemade mustard plasters. I remember one time having my mother put a mustard plaster across my chest. I don't know how it was made, but it was hot and you could inhale some fumes so that's kind of what Vicks Vaporub turned out to be. Anyway, the business grew and in the winter of 1915, they had a really bad flu epidemic. Mr. Richardson started marketing and selling more of his Vicks Vaporub and it really went over great. By the end of World War I, in 1919, business was really growing. His older son, Smith Richardson, came into the business and was quite a dynamo himself and he began advertising and putting the product all over the country and really helped the business to continue to grow. That's another story of an entrepreneur who started in a corner drugstore and really succeeded.

Now, down to the main business I'm here to tell you about today. It's one which is much, much smaller than the others. That is Goody's Pharmaceuticals. As I said earlier, my father was in the candy and wholesale tobacco business. He was born south of Asheboro and quit school after the fifth grade. When he was seventeen, he realized the mistake he had made and went back to school, attending Guilford College and then worked his way through Chapel Hill. After serving in World War I he came to Winston-Salem and went into business with Mr. Bert Bennett, Sr. The business was Bennett-Lewallen Wholesale Candy and Tobacco Company on South Main Street in Winston-Salem.

As a child my brother and I used to go with my father down to the office because he had bubble gum and suckers and I would get suckers to take to school the next day to my friends, you know, getting some points. But my brother loved candy, and one night we got home and he was up all night long going to the bathroom. My mother was calling the doctor, wondering what was wrong with him and thinking he was going to die. It turned out he'd eaten a whole box of chocolate Exlax and thought it was chocolate candy.

There are lots of good stories like that I could tell but there's not enough time today. My father started Goody's when he and Mr. Bennett used to call on all the drugstores and all the little grocery stores and wholesalers around to sell them cigarettes, cigars, candy, chewing gum, Exlax, etc. One particular drugstore, also on a corner, was owned by Martin Goodman; he somehow had gotten a formula for a headache powder.

He had a soda fountain boy work for him after school who would mix a few powders by hand. Mr. Goodman would put the powder in envelopes and put them out in front on his counter and try to peddle them to his friends. My father and Mr. Bennett would call on him and Mr. Goodman would try to peddle his headache powder off on them.

My father bought the headache powder formula from Mr. Goodman. Of course, there's the story that's been told that my father won the formula in a card game or a golf game. However, I know he didn't win it in a golf game because he never was that good of a golfer. I do have the bill of sale for it from Petree Stockton law firm in Winston for $500. However he acquired it, he knew what to do with it when he got it. My father went to New York and bought a machine which we still have in the basement of our building in Old Salem today. He bought one machine and rented two offices in a downtown bank building in Winston-Salem. My mother answered the telephone until they hired a secretary. The guy who was the soda fountain boy became the production manager and another pharmacist in Winston who was a friend of my father came to work as a part-time pharmacist, mixing and measuring the ingredients. Girls, young women, packaged the powders by hand in those days. They worked on what you call piece-time and they got so they could really fill those packages in a hurry. Of course later we had machines to do that and everything else as well.

My father hired one salesman, a good old boy from South Carolina, because in those days selling was everything--it was every mom-and-pop store down the road. He'd go through North and South Carolina and stop at every little filling station along the way, every little grocery store and drugstore in every little town. We grew to have thirty-seven salesmen and those salesmen each made, and listen to this, forty-four calls a day. They had to send in their reports every week. Needless to say, times have changed. Business later grew to what I refer to as contract-type business, where we only ended up having nine or so people in our sales force, a sales manager and certain salespeople who called on chains like Kmart, Winn-Dixie, Food Lion, Kroger and Harris-Teeter to mention a few. The chain stores have buying offices and you don't need as many salesmen because the ones chosen for this particular position call on the buying offices and then the chains send the products out from their own warehouses to their own stores.

So, Goody's has drastically changed over the years, and it's been interesting and fascinating to watch. There's a story that was told quite often about my father going on a trip to the beach. When we finally got two cars, my father would start to the beach in one car ahead of us and he would stop at a filling station and ask for Goody's, then he'd go on. Then my mother and I and my brother would come in the next car (and I remember this). We would stop at the same place and my mother would go in asking if they had any Goody's headache powders. If they didn't sell Goody's, my father was sure that a salesman would be there the next week.

I told a marketing class this morning that sampling has been the best advertising you could ever have when you have a product like Goody's. Put it in the people's hands and if they try it and they like it, they'll buy it. I had a senator from Alabama tell me about a year ago that he was trying to get elected years back and he would go to all the mills in the mornings and hand out his card trying to get votes. He said, "you know, nobody would even take my card." He said he looked up and saw a Goody's salesman standing over there just passing out samples of Goody's and the people were taking them as fast as they could. He said, "So I went and bought myself a gross of Goody's to hand out and, you know, I got elected."

As the business grew, my father bought a building in Old Salem and more machines which were operated by more employees. The business grew and we were very fortunate. In 1945 my father died very suddenly and this is where I have to mention Wachovia Bank. My father was smart enough to leave his will with the trust department at Wachovia Bank.

I want to tell you a little bit about Wachovia's trust department because that was started by an entrepreneur also. Wachovia National Bank itself was founded in 1879 on Main Street in Winston-Salem. They chartered for Wachovia Loan and Trust in 1891 but the doors to the trust part of it would not open until 1893. The person who started the loan and trust department was a Colonel Frances Freeze. He was from an old Moravian family in Salem. His family was fortunate and owned woolen and cotton mills. He was a graduate of Davidson College and he worked in the cotton and woolen mills until he was drafted by the citizens of Winston-Salem to build a railroad between Winston and Roanoke. Winston was kind of off on the side and the only railroad was between Winston and Greensboro. So at the age of 32 he took on this project and he finished it five years later so, by the time he was 38 years old, he'd worked himself out of a job. He came back to Winston and he and his brother decided the brother would stay in the mill business and that he would start a new enterprise. The legislature had given the charter for the loan and trust company in 1891, so in 1893 he opened the doors using that charter for the trust department at Wachovia. It was started on Main Street in a little wooden building. There were two employees--Colonel Frances Freeze was the president and his nephew was the secretary and treasurer. I just want you to know that Wachovia has one of the oldest trust departments in the United States.

I tell you about Wachovia because when my father died, as I mentioned, he left his will with Wachovia Trust. Wachovia could have sold our business because often trust departments do, because they don't see a future. However, with Goody's they saw a glimmer of light and they felt like this might be a viable business. My mother chose Charlie Norfleet in the trust department to guide the business. I refer to Wachovia and this man as our godfather because if it weren't for them, today we might not have a business. My brother was in the service at the time and I was only 17, and there was nobody else. Along with Mr. Norfleet and Wachovia, the production manager (who had been the soda fountain boy) became president and the business began to grow.

A few years later the president died very suddenly. At that time we gave our accounting guy, Tom Chambers, who had come to us from McGladrey & Pullen, the chance to become president. As president he helped to grow the business for the next fourteen years. In the meantime a wonderful businessman, Robert Boulton, who had retired in North Carolina, came to our door by way of another Wachovia connection and we hired him as a consultant. He'd been president of Norwich Eaton Pharmaceutical Company. You can imagine that this was a tremendous boost to us. He had all the contacts, he knew all the proper people that we needed to contact in order to grow the business and he helped tremendously over those years. The only thing I would advise you students is, if you're in a business, you can't always afford to have somebody in management succession in every job you have, particularly when you're a young small business. But as you grow, be sure and have somebody behind each person to take over in case something happens. This is extremely important!

I've been on the board since I was 25 and chairman since about 1978. I kept fussing about management succession. There were people we had been looking at but nobody had surfaced. The board voted and I took over about three years ago and intended to get our house in order. Well, six months after I took over, I got a call from our pharmacologist one night at 6:15 as I walked into the house. He said, "Ann, I've just had a call from the FBI. They tell me a man has died from taking a Goody's headache powder." Well, needless to say, I was in a state of shock. Of course, we were at the office bright and early the next morning discussing the situation and what we could do about it. We talked about pulling the powders off the market within a 500-mile radius of this little town in Tennessee. We talked about many different things, but in my mind there was only one thing to do and that was to have a total recall of our headache powders.

We didn't know what was going on and I didn't know until a month later on the front page of The Wall Street Journal about another company having the same experience we had. They did not recall the product and three more people died. So, I'm very grateful that our decision was to recall all the products, but it was costly. On Christmas Eve, we were sending out letters to all of our customers telling them to get the products off their shelves, send them back to us and, of course, we would pay for the returns. We even got one little box, about six inches by six inches, that a lady sent back by Roadway Trucking Company to the tune of about $160 for that one little package.

We had to keep everything quarantined and roped off. We rented extra warehouse space to quarantine all our product until the FDA came in to check it out. Even what we had in-house, which would have never been shipped out-of-house, we could not use. So I was very sad when I went to our employees and said, "We're closing the doors today and I don't know whether we'll ever open again or not."

But we were very, very fortunate. Things worked out well. Two months later, in February, the courts in Tennessee ruled that the guy committed suicide. He had removed the ingredients of our powder and replaced it with cyanide. His girlfriend was with him, he had bought the product along with other things and two hours later she was standing there when he took it and just like that he was gone. We found out he'd taken out a big insurance policy. But I don't know whether or not they ever paid on it.

Anyway, it was ruled a suicide. We never felt that it was anything that we had done. At that point we had to start over again changing packaging, etc. Our employees and customers were great. We came back strong. Before that, we w ere planning on building a new plant because we had bought another pharmaceutical company called Mayrand Pharmaceuticals, which produces prescription drugs, that we market directly to doctors and pharmacists. They are things such as a New Iron product that we sell to dialysis centers. We have cough and cold products, we have an antioxidant nutritional supplement which contains betacarotene, vitamin C and vitamin E which some researchers are saying now is good for preventing cancer and heart disease. The biggest seller is a product called Eldertonic, a vitamin/mineral supplement. It is kind of like Geritol and I guarantee we put the finest sherry in it that you can find. It is sold often to retirement homes.

We had bought Mayrand which had fifty salesmen and we were growing that company and doing well with it. So we continued to run Mayrand while the other plant was closed. But all in all, we were very, very fortunate and came through and business came back really strong. As I said we had been planning on building a plant before all this happened and those plans had been put on the back burner for awhile. Then after we got it all together again, we were talking to architects and engineers about building the plant. We bought a piece of property off I-40 coming into Winston and we were in the process of finishing up that and building a plant and making some new acquisitions and so forth.

We had also added some other products over the years--Isodettes, which is a sore throat lozenge we had bought from Revlon; and we came out with a throat spray and a vitamin C tablet which is delicious. And if you have a sore throat, go buy the Isodettes Sore Throat Spray; Wal-Mart sells it. And they're doing a super job with it and it's really a great product. We also had a product called NumZit, which is a teething product for babies, and Numzident for adults.

We were about ready to build the plant and consolidate everything in Winston last summer, when one day our law firm, Petree Stockton, got a message from another fine old law firm in Winston-Salem--Womble Carlyle. The message was that somebody was interested in buying us. We received letters every day from potential buyers and I just threw them in the trash can because we weren't interested in selling. I said no, we were not interested. They said it's a mid-sized pharmaceutical company and they really want you badly. I again said no that we're not interested. Then I started thinking that that's a different approach they've taken to go through Womble Carlyle to Petree Stockton to get to us. I went to our lawyer and said, "I'm curious. I really would like to know who is interested. Can you find out?"

Soon one morning after a staff meeting, I had a telephone call and this person said, "Ann, this is John Peters." John Peters is the legal counsel and the senior vice president for Block Drug Company which bought BC twenty-eight years ago. Interestingly all of the headache powders on the market today are from North Carolina and were made originally by entrepreneurs. BC was in Durham, Stanback is still in Salisbury, and we were in Winston-Salem.

Anyway, John Peters called me and said, "Ann, we've been trying to buy you for twenty years and I asked you two years ago and you told me no again." I had served on a board with him and we had become friendly competitors, so he felt free to call and let me know that they were the ones trying again. He said, "Would you just listen this time." I said, "I don't think we're really interested but I'll be back in touch with you." I talked to my board and business advisors and they said that maybe we ought to listen. Our reasoning goes back to the management succession issue again. I had one son and a nephew in the business. My son had sold for General Electric Medical Systems and had only been back with the business about three years. My nephew had been in the real estate and brokerage business and hadn't been with Goody's long. So we didn't feel they were ready. We had had a headhunter looking for somebody to become president and we had not been successful in finding the right person. You know sometimes the time is right and my board and all other business advisors encouraged me to listen to Block Drug's offer. We listened and, while it was not planned, we came to an agreement almost overnight.

Working it out took months since last September in the law offices morning, noon and night. Our lawyers were wonderful. We closed the sale to Block Drug on December 16, 1994. They wanted us because they knew how good we were and how much competition we'd given them. We had the market share right up with them and they wanted us badly. And if anybody's worried about it, one of the main things they wanted was to stay in NASCAR, which we were involved with for seventeen years.

Richard Petty was the finest spokesman that we could ever have had and I hope he's doing well since his operation last week. I told the students this morning that, other than sampling, NASCAR has been proven to be the best advertising tool in the world. Everybody wants to get into it now and we were extremely fortunate to get in when we did. NASCAR was started by Bill France, Sr., a native of Winston-Salem, who used to race at Bowman-Gray Stadium. The mayor of Winston at the time and a former banker in Winston went to Florida to help him start NASCAR on the beach in Daytona. It's now the biggest spectator sport in the world. Goody's was just fortunate to get in when we did.

As I said, we sold Goody's in December, but we kept Mayrand Pharmaceuticals. However, we did sell Mayrand a month ago to a wonderful German man who has a pharmaceutical company in Germany. What's so wonderful about it is that he bought not only the products, but he also bought all the employees. He wanted to have a viable business in this country.

I say to you students today that it might be hard getting a job in some of the big companies because they're downsizing today. So think about entrepreneurship no matter how small it is. On the second section of the Winston paper about two weeks ago there was a picture of a young man who had started a t-shirt business. I tell you about him because the first place he came to sell his t-shirts was here at Appalachian. It was a day like today only maybe worse, rainy and terrible and cold. He went home not having sold a single t-shirt. He was a student at Wake Forest, and he went back and got an answering machine for his room at school, and started advertising his t-shirts. He has now dropped out of school, I think, after two years, but he hopes to go back. He goes to colleges everywhere and operates out of his car. I wish him lots of luck!

I'll tell you deans and professors one last story before I stop. It's a story my minister told from the pulpit one day. Your chancellor was telling me last night about how many applications he has for a very few places. It's tougher and tougher to get into Appalachian, so I commend you students for getting in to begin with, you've got to be very smart. The minister told a story about a college professor who had people write recommendations for students who were sending in their applications. A lot of times nowadays they don't even look at recommendations, they go strictly by your records. But in the olden days they would look at the letters of recommendation. Of course, every parent always wrote a recommendation on their own child. This president of the college said, you know, out of 999 applications, every single one of them were leaders except one. He said he wrote back to the parent whose child was a follower and told him he was accepting his child right then because they needed at least one to follow. Everybody cannot be the leader or the president and everybody cannot be an entrepreneur. So some of you can be followers because every business needs followers in there to help the entrepreneurs and the presidents do a good job.

I wish each and every one of you the best of luck and thank you for letting me be here today.