January 14, 2002
PILGRIM'S PROGRESS: East Texas businessman Bo Pilgrim
___Since 1946, Lonnie "Bo" Pilgrim has built Pilgrim's Pride from a small feed store in the East Texas village of Pittsburg into an international Fortune 500 corporation and one of the largest chicken producers in the world. While developing a billion-dollar company, Pilgrim also has won numerous awards for food-service excellence. Through it all, he has remained a faithful husband, father and grandfather, provided steadyleadership in his local Baptist church and supported numerous Baptist causes.
BO PILGRIM
Q.
___ How did your family shape the person you turned out to be?
___I was born in a small community, Pine, Texas, 100 population. My father was the postmaster there, and he had a general merchandise store. He passed away in 1939, and there were seven of us children left at home. I had lots of respect for my father. I hung around the store. After he passed away, people would make statements about how honest he was, and that always gave me a desire to be honorable and respectable like he was. He was a community leader. People sold their cotton to him. He bought logs. People would shop in his store. ... He was quite a role model.
Q.
___ How did you get into the chicken business?
___Prior to the chicken business ... my father died when I was 10 years old, and my mother remarried three years later. I didn't accept the remarriage. So, I left home to live with my grandmother. My grandfather had died. She owned the land, and we had sharecroppers, and we would butcher hogs, raise chickens in the back yard, and sell them to a peddler or trade them for things we didn't have. I grew up in agriculture, and the chicken business started after I had finished high school.
___My brother had a feed store in Pittsburg, and he had a partner, and I had started to work for them, driving a truck. The partner was the nephew of the guy who sold the store to him. He decided he didn't like doing that, and my brother asked me, did I want to come in and take his place. And, of course, the answer was yes. We sold feed and fertilizer and different things that the farmers needed. So, that's where it all started.
___In the feed store, back in those days, you'd come in and buy a hundred baby chicks. We had brooders. So you'd buy a hundred chicks and a sack of feed and take them home and feed them in the back yard. Then, after you got through, you'd use some of the chickens and bring the others back and sell them to the feed store.
Q.
___ What has been the secret to your success?
___My father died in April, and in June we were having a revival service. We had a part-time preacher who would come there. That was in June following April. At that time, I had a heavy heart. I wanted to be with my earthly father as well as my heavenly Father. At that point, I had not made a profession of faith and joined the church, but things were right to cause me to make that move.
___I remember it very well, because in this little community there was a half a dozen of us little boys that ran together. We got together outside the church that night and talked it over and decided that was the best thing for us to do. We had been stealing some tobacco from the store and doing some things we shouldn't do, and we were going to clear the slate. Either five or six of us went down the aisle, all together.
Q.
___ What church was that?
___It was the little Baptist church in the community, the only church in the community.
Q.
___Have you learned more from success or failure?
___That's hard to say, but failure is a good discipline for your moving on to the next step. I've had failures. I bought a company in California, and it liked to bankrupt me. I've had things I've done that didn't work out, so you always use that as a caution light when you're fixing to cross into something else--to be sure that you're doing your checks and balances properly.
___I think my success comes from when I went into this business in Pittsburg. I was committed to the Lord and promised him if I ever amounted to anything that I'd always give him credit for it. Over behind this feed store was a Methodist church. It just stood up--the magnitude of it. If you took a picture of the feed store, there was that church in the background. I knew God was with us, and he had a plan, and we didn't need to get too far from God and the way he would direct us. So, I always prayed about different ventures before I went into them, and lots of prayer after I went into them.
___Being in business is a roller-coaster thing.
Q.
___ What are the most important lessons of life you've learned along the way?
___No. 1 is being honest. To motivate people, you've got to be on their level. Of course, I started out without a college education, with three of us in business, and it has grown up to where today we have 25,400 employees. They all are partners to me. One of the things you have to do is motivate people. People have to respect your integrity and honesty. They like the fact you're on their level--they can talk to you.
Q.
___You mentioned making a profession of faith in Christ and relying on prayer. What role did your Christian faith play in your family and community and personal development--the spheres of your life?
___Of course, in the family, I always took the wife and the children; we went to church every Sunday. We'd go to Training Union on Sunday night and church on Sunday night. We still go to church on Sunday night, which, you know, lots of people have kind of laid that aside. But I think church gives you the encouragement and guidance and direction all of us need in making the right decisions and being the right kind of person and practicing love.
Q.
___ Is it hard to balance love and business?
___No, it's really not, although some people looking at it may think you're hard-hearted. When you're a chief executive officer and the owner of a company, you have to make some hard decisions sometimes, but it pounds in your heart when you do that. From my side, I've always stopped to think: "When I make this decision, what are the effects on everybody else?" I love people, and I don't like to make decisions that are selfish.
Q.
___ Do you have a sense of calling from God?
___There's no doubt that God wanted me to exemplify being a Christian businessman. I have that feeling, and I am forever conscious of that. I'll go out and make lots of talks around the country. There's where I give Jesus credit for everything I am.
___To prove that I have a calling: My father died when he was 43 years old. My brother died at 42 years old. I had a brother who died at 47. I had a brother who died at 58. All of these died because of hardening of the arteries, and I had open-heart surgery in 1975 and a heart attack in '82, so I'm not supposed to be talking to you. But the reason I am is God has a purpose for me, and I'm just carrying that out for him as a Christian businessman. I have two sisters--one 10 years younger who has had open-heart surgery and one eight years younger who has had open-heart surgery. Our history is such that none of us has lived very long.
___So, this is a confirmation that God wants me to keep doing what I've been doing.
Q.
___ What about being a Christian in business--particularly regarding temptations, ethical decisions and business practices? How do you keep your perspective?
___You can find ways to cut corners, but you better not go out of line, because it comes back to haunt you. As far as adultery, I've never had that problem. And to do things dishonest, as we talked about, is not part of my routine to make a dollar.
Q.
___What kind of advice would you give young businesspeople who want to be successful but also want to hold fast to their faith and Christian lifestyle?
___You have to be willing to take a risk. You have to be an entrepreneur if you're going to be in business. You have to have integrity and honesty. You have to be, unfortunately, almost a workaholic. You have to maintain that fire in the belly to maintain hope and don't give up, because people in business are under lots of pressure. They're responsible for lots of assets and lots of people, and where they produce a product, they're responsible for that.
___You have lots of pressure, and you have to be able to take that pressure. But the way to take it is take it one day at a time. Read your Bible. Say your prayers daily. Do the best you can, and leave the rest of it up to God. You have to learn to accept things lots of times rather than change things--particularly when you're dealing with people. You can't change people. You have to accept people.
Q.
___ Where is your church home?
___I go to church there at the First Baptist in Pittsburg. I've been a member there, I believe, since the early '50s.
Q.
___ Are you home on the weekends?
___I have two planes, and one of the things I promised the Lord was that when Friday comes I'd be heading home. I could be in New York or Florida every weekend. Lots of executives do that; that's their golf time and all. Well, that's the time I go home, and I've been teaching a Bible class ever since the '50s. One of the things I look forward to is being with that class--the fellowship and the love that we have for one another and the Lord. I guess that's my golf game for the weekend.
Q.
___ Why have you invested so heavily in East Texas?
___Well, East Texas lends itself to producing chickens and processing chickens. We have cheap land, lots of farmers, and we're far enough from the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex that you're in agriculture--you're in cattle, chickens, pine trees, lignite coal, that type of thing. So, it fits the environment that we need in our business. We have to use the land and air and water in our business, and that's where it is, out there.
Q.
___ With all your history in chickens, do you know why the chicken crossed the road?
___I wish I could give you the answer. I guess everybody has a different answer, but I never really coined an answer for why the chicken crossed the road.
___Interview by Marv Knox
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