Posted on: Monday, July 5, 2004
Teen shares advice of CEOs
By Wendy Tanaka
Philadelphia Inquirer
PHILADELPHIA — Douglas Barry was all of 12 when he ditched his dream of becoming an archaeologist. It was too much hard work, with all that digging.
Instead, he decided that managing archaeologists would be the way to go.
"I began to wonder if it might be better to just sit in a nice office ... while I still got to reap the benefits of the dig," Barry, now 18, wrote in his book, "Wisdom for a Young CEO," a collection of career-advice letters from chief executives across the country.
Ah, spoken like a true chief executive officer in the making.
Barry, a New Jersey resident who graduated in June from St. Joseph's Preparatory High School in Philadelphia, has received a flood of media attention since his book hit stores in May. He has been interviewed by Deborah Norville on MSNBC, the Financial Times and Parade magazine, among others.
"This is a window into a world a lot of people don't get to see," Barry said. "I didn't think it would be this big of a deal."
He began mailing his inquiries to CEOs for a class project in 2000. About 200 of them wrote back, including Jack Greenberg, then CEO of McDonald's Corp.; Jacques Nasser, who headed Ford Motor Co.; and Craig Barrett, CEO of Intel Corp.
Some executives went a step further. After receiving Barry's letter, Millard Drexler, then at Gap Inc., called him. Pat Croce, then of the Philadelphia 76ers, took the time to meet with Barry personally.
"I talked about myself for half an hour," Barry recalled about his time with Croce. "Someone so influential and a big name in the city really cared."
The CEOs' letters ranged from a couple of sentences to several pages. (Since Barry started the project, some of the executives have retired, and some have left under pressure.)
While many told Barry that the best route to success in business was to work hard at something he loved, they also advised him that being a CEO should not be the sole goal of a career — or his life.
In all, about 80 percent of the CEOs Barry contacted responded to his questions. Very few sent form letters.
William Avery, the former CEO of Crown Cork & Seal Co. Inc., in Philadelphia, said in an interview that he had taken the time to write back because Barry's letter sounded sincere.
"CEOs respond to that," Avery said. "Sometimes, I'd see something that was obviously a form letter. It was probably sent out to 500 people, so I don't have to answer it."
Sam Caggiula, director of publicity at Philadelphia's Running Press Book Publishers, which published the book, suggested that Barry's query letter might have been a refreshing change for some CEOs at a time when corporate America was coming under increased scrutiny.
The notion of turning the responses into a book grew out of Barry's dinner conversations with his mother, a human resources executive at chemical-maker Hercules Inc., in Wilmington, Del.
Also, Barry said, his father, a chiropractor, immediately thought the letters would make a good book.
Through his mother's friends, Running Press heard about Barry's project and contacted him.
Barry said Running Press gave him a $2,000 advance for the book, and he will receive royalties of 76 cents for each book sold. The first press run was 30,000 copies; so far, 17,400 have been sold, Caggiula said.
That would mean more than $13,000 for Barry so far.
So, is Barry heeding the advice he got from all those executives?
Absolutely, he said — by not pursuing a business education. He will be a freshman at Tulane University in the fall, majoring in English.
He has also started work on his next book: "Wisdom for a College Student," a compilation of letters from businesspeople, celebrities, athletes and politicians on how students can get the most from their college experience.
