The 1994 Inc. 500 $$$ (gutter paragraphs)

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#14
The Value of Education
Most of the 1994 Inc. 500 CEOs have at least a degree from a four-year college. Of those, only 13% have M.B.A.'s and 8% have Ph.D.'s. The latter group includes Edward Farrer of Quik-Pak, whose doctorate is in comparative literature; after earning it, he landed a job as a post-office clerk. "There was a recession in the mid-'70s," he says. "You took what you could get." But after 16 years Farrer hadn't managed to save a cent for his children's college educations. Better start a company, he thought. Quik-Pak is a shipping service that works closely with Farrer's former employer, the U.S. Postal Service. And its fast growth is putting all four children through college -- undergraduate degrees only, so far.

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#26
If It's Thursday, This Must Be . . .
The average Inc. 500 CEO works a 66-hour week. Jim Roland of American Magnetite crams most of his working hours into four days. He flies to work in St. Louis on Monday morning and then back home to his wife and six kids, in Baton Rouge, La., on Thursday night. One night, rushing back to Baton Rouge to relieve the baby-sitter, he hopped on the wrong connection out of Memphis. He didn't suspect a thing until he walked off the plane. To this day flight attendants snicker when Roland boards a plane and asks where he's going.

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# 40, #43
You Say ESOP, I Say ISOP
Like TGV, 18% of the Inc. 500 share the wealth through an employee stock ownership plan. "It's kind of like health benefits at this point," says TGV CEO Craig Conway. "To not have one would be such a glaring omission." Nancy Archuleta of Mevatec decided on an incentive stock option plan (ISOP) to avoid the hassle of federal reporting requirements. Says Archuleta, "I wanted to see what the added value would be."

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# 57
Cash-outs of Steel
On June 21, 1994, Howard Maier sold his eight-year-old company to a division of Time Warner. Maier Group, famous for its Buns of Steel exercise videos, worked out attractive terms including cash, hefty lifetime royalties, and a three-year consultant's job for Maier. "They wanted two things," says Maier. " Buns of Steel, and Buns of Steel. I was a throw-in, basically."

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# 64
Sure, If It's Cosigned by a Parent or Guardian
This year's oldest Inc. 500 CEO is 69; the average age is 42. At 23, Michael Shalom of Intcomex is the youngest CEO. He started his company at 19, which shocked a vendor who discovered his age while running a credit check. Hollenshead eventually won over the vendor, even securing a tiny line of credit.

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# 99
Community Impact
"Who wins?" asks Daniel Barcheski, CEO of Staffing Inc. "The client wins, the community wins, the employee wins." Barcheski is talking about IMPACT (Innovative Mentoring Program to Advance Communitywide Training), an alliance between three nonprofit agencies in Grand Rapids designed to provide job-skill training to underprivileged and displaced workers. Staffing regularly donates a portion of its profits in the name of its clients to those three organizations, which help handicapped, injured, or economically disadvantaged people get back on their feet.

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# 118
In 1991 Louvonia Wilson, president of Kestrel Associates, designed a summer internship program to attract minority candidates interested in science and technology. Every spring Kestrel Associates sends out letters to the job-placement centers of universities whose student bodies have traditionally been largely African American. Says Wilson, "I try to give them a boost so they'll have equal access to the industry."

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# 142
Inc. 500, the Next Generation
"My mother has seven Inc. 500 plaques on the wall," Jim Wolande says. Six are from his brother Chuck's company, Comark, now a nearly half-billion-dollar business too large to apply for the list. Jim Wolande's company, Triangle Technologies, won the seventh plaque last year, and this year it will be adding an eighth. Wolande started out as a salesman with his brother's start-up 17 years ago.