If my father's business hadn't gone broke, I'd be exporting nuts, bolts and sugar machinery right now. What an awful thought!
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
My dad was an entrepreneurial businessman, and maybe I got some of his ability.
My father was a small-businessman, and if he didn't get up and go to work, there would be no business.
I couldn't stand back and watch the strong economy that my father envisioned go to ruins.
We live in such a service-based, globalised economy where very few people actually make anything and the people who do make stuff... it's all part of a massive global supply chain. So what if all those chains were suddenly cut, how would you make something? How would you keep people alive? And that was something I wanted to explore.
My dad is an unbelievable entrepreneur who balanced his life as a father and a president of two very successful companies.
For us to grow globally, it's not enough to just be an exporter. We have to be a creator.
Well, the way things are going, aside from wheat and auto parts, America's biggest export is now the Oscar.
My father worked for the railroad, and whenever a train crashed, we would go as a family and steal food from the boxcars. One year we stole a case of butterscotch pudding that was for export to Israel. It took us years to get through.
I brought my sons into the business to extend my working life, so I could keep my hand in the business.
We're actually making stuff in America now. We're exporting stuff. We're inventing things.