WINSTON-SALEM, NC (AgapePress) - Truett Cathy, the founder of Chick-Fil-A Restaurant, was in Austin, TX, last week visiting with President Bush and a group of some of the nation's leading business people on the subject of corporate responsibility.

It was an engagement he had to fit into a schedule of recent presentations in North Carolina. Speaking at Winston-Salem's Calvary Baptist Church, as part of that church's Summer Monday services, Cathy brought to the Triad area the same message he took to President Bush: that there's no substitute for hard work, honesty, and integrity.

“It takes more time to fail, than to succeed,” he said in a folksy twang. “Why is it that so many of them making [sic] foolish decisions. They make their own decisions knowing that sometimes that it's the wrong decision. [They] go ahead and make it anyway.”

Cathy related how he teaches 13-year-olds at his church in Jonesboro, Georgia, and tries to instill positive values in them before they get older and prejudiced by negative influences.

“[I] tell my youngsters in my class, 'This is a do-it-yourself world; you get rewards for your good decisions and you have to suffer the consequences for your bad decisions. You can't blame your parents, society, or anyone else. You get what you ask for.' ”

Truett Cathy

Cathy said he believes that God intended for everyone to be successful. He makes a distinction between rich and successful. He thinks everybody recognizes that anyone can “do anything if [they] really wanted to.” Therefore, he said, everybody gets what they want.

Cathy told the standing-room-only crowd that he got his start in business in Atlanta at the age of eight. His mother rented out rooms and Cathy helped his mother around the house with the borders. He started selling Cokes (he calls them “Co-Colas”) and made a nickel profit from every six he sold. Then he persuaded the Coke driver to sell to him wholesale, which upped his profits eight fold. He later expanded his line to include Orange Crush and Nu-Grape.

“In [the] off season time [I] sold magazines,” he said. “Ladies Home Journal sold for fifteen cents, so I make [sic] four cents. Saturday Evening Post sold for five cents ... made a cent-and-a-half. You can guess which one I tried to sell first. If they couldn't buy the fifteen-cent magazine, I'd pull the five-cent magazine on them and make a cent-and-a-half profit.

“It was that or no profit at all. Rich people bought the fifteen-cent magazine. Poor people bought the five-cent magazine. The contents was [sic] not all that important, it's what you could afford back then."

“Then [I] started selling [the] Atlanta Journal,” he continued. “It was during this time that I determined that I was going to own a business of my own. You bought them wholesale, and sold them retail. [I] was in competition with [the] evening paper at the time, and was offered [a] pocket knife, a t-shirt, or a trip to Jacksonville beach for increasing subscriptions. I wasn't afraid to call them at eleven at night to get them to subscribe. I was there rain or shine. I was always challenged by that.”

Cathy was drafted after graduating from an all boys' high school and missed going to college. “It never bothered me because I never got excited about school -- but I got excited about working,” he said as he segued into the current Congressional investigations into corporate executive greed and corporate bankruptcy.

Cathy was asked recently to give testimony on corporate integrity after being seen on national network programs. He told the representatives that stockholders are being taken advantage of after putting their life savings into stocks for retirement or to pass on to their children. He noted that many who were depending on their investments for their income were having to go back to work.

Making a point to one congressman who was a Naval Academy graduate, he said that “the captain of the ship never deserts the ship. You got a sinking ship; you got a captain that makes sure that everybody that's there is rescued."

“Your life is in danger but you must stay there until the last passenger is safe there. Same as business, the CEO's who got it made, foresaw trouble coming, sold out, and have deserted the ship. [They] deserted the business and left someone else holding the bag.”

"I tried to point out to them the question: 'How can you make it?' So much pressure is put on these individuals to make a profit -- and character, how are you going to balance out those two things?

"I shared with this group that I thought the only solution was the Bible. I believe the Bible to be a roadmap for our life and a blueprint for our life, and we could do very well to not only read the Bible, but put the Bible into practice."

"You can memorize the Bible if you want to, but unless it causes you to evaluate yourself [by] what it's been saying to you, it won't do you no good," he continued. "If you're just going to read and not practice [it], there's much in that Bible that tells us how to deal in business, how to treat out customers, how to treat our neighbors, widows, and children."

"And so that was my balance, my answer. I saw no conflict whatsoever in good business practice and biblical principles."

Cathy switched back to talk about integrity in his business and Sunday closings. "Closing on Sundays is what I consider the best business decision I've ever made," he said. "I feel God called me into the restaurant business just as sure as He called you in your particular calling, whatever your ministry or business might be.

"When you feel that God is in it, it's a wonderful, wonderful feeling. [We] started out with the Dwarf Grill, and it was there that we decided to close on Sundays. It's pretty easy to make that decision," he said wryly, "because when you work 24 hours, six days, you're ready for a break. So we just made the decision, we'll close on Sundays."

"I was always brought up to go to Sunday school and church, [I] didn't do much work around the house, and with my family and friends, I could do some things that I couldn't do otherwise. I didn't want to be robbed of that day."

Cathy said that as bad as he and his wife needed the business, they decided to stay the course, and God has blessed them. He said that although statistics show he loses approximately 20% of his revenue to Sunday closings, his weekly sales are stronger than other fast-service food retailers.

Staying a privately held company is another decision Cathy said he doesn't plan to reverse. He feels the company is a calling, and going public on the stock exchange would rob him of doing things that only staying private allows.

"Besides," he quipped, "if I go public, I might be out of a job. God has seen fit to bless me in a bountiful way."