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From homeless drug abuser to millionaire entrepreneur

May 28, 2008

I hired salespeople, but they couldn't sell anything. I told my wife, "I might just do it myself." I had always detested sales and salespeople. But I found out that's what I'm really good at.

I went in and told food-service directors how they could save money. They were doing everything manually, and I showed them all the things that our software could do. Within two weeks I had my first order.

Then I went to another one, and I went to another one, and pretty soon I had all of Georgia. So I became our chief salesperson. You wouldn't believe how I could sell. I could sell firewood in hell.

It wasn't like I was real flush with cash. Pretty much all my career I was undercapitalized. I borrowed on my home equity and loaded up my credit cards.

We started with three or four people, in 1993, and each year we would either double or triple in size. Now we have 173 employees and sales of $26 million.