Growing up in eastern Turkey, I was not really involved with the family business - sheep and cow farming, yogurt and cheese making. But I think I learned from my father the unspoken business language or instincts that go back thousands of years.

I love innovation, I love competing. I hate my competitors. You cannot be in the world of business when you don't have this consciousness of winning.

Every small business will give you an entrepreneurial way of looking at things. I guarantee you that for every plant that closes, if you gave it to one small-business person in that community, he or she would find a way to make it work. The small-business attitude is you always find a way to make it work.

A closed plant is like a cemetery; it really is. The walls will talk to you; the machines will talk to you if you really talk to them.

I started a feta cheese company, Euphrates, in upstate New York in 2002.

But as the business grows, you get more attention, and then you realize that the whole world is trying to get time from you. Which is amazing. But every time you give it to the world, you give less to what you’re doing.

Unlike the objective of far too many companies, manufacturing is not about a quick exit. It is centered on long-term value creation.