"Sykes Enterprises: Then and Now," as told by the company's founder and CEO, John Sykes, is an inspiring story. Local boy makes good — very good!
     We got the first clues in Richard Rankin's introduction, which sketched Sykes' relation to Queens College since 1998, where he had been a one-year student before dropping out in the '50s. Two college trustees, Dee Ray and Hugh McColl, approached him to support the McColl School of Business building program. First came a $5 million gift to underwrite the John H. Sykes Learning Center, a 28,000-square-foot structure to be completed in September 2000. Next, $5 million for endowment. The resulting total of over $10.4 million in one year is the second largest gift from a living benefactor in the history of North Carolina's private higher education. As important as this largess, Sykes now serves on the board and chairs a new Queens capital fund campaign.
     A native of Charlotte, born in the Belmont district as son of a police officer, he started Sykes Enterprises in 1977 with six employees. Today its payroll exceeds 12,800 and it offers information technology outsourcing services on four continents, working out of 29 technical call centers, 9 e-commerce centers, and 25 branch offices.
     Since moving corporate headquarters to Tampa in the early '90s, Sykes has become a civic leader and philanthropist, making a $10 million commitment to the University of Tampa where he is chairman-elect of the Board of Trustees, winning the 1996 Florida Entrepreneur of the Year award, and chairing the committee seeking to bring the 2012 Olympics to Tampa.
     Claiming not to have a prepared speech, Sykes spoke as a man who spent a lifetime building the story. At age 41, he secured a $10,000 SBA loan to buy a small service business, overcoming loan officers' reluctance to make loans for intangibles. From the original 600 square feet of office space, the company has expanded to produce revenues of $600 million, with sales growing at 30% per year, and profits at 40%. Since Sykes went public in 1996, market capitalization has grown 350% to $1.4 billion.
     The man behind all this was born in 1936 "on the wrong side of the tracks" in Charlotte. His father's meager pay as a police officer required him to take other part-time jobs and his mother to work. Their lives focused on each other and, as a Christian family, on their church, Belmont Park Methodist, where his father taught Sunday School, and where the family attended as many as four times a week. The Charlotte News once gave the elder Sykes some notoriety as the officer who solved a murder by prayer, when a suspect confessed after having private prayer with him.
     Sykes highlighted two lessons he learned from this modest background. First, "the policeman is always right." His father taught Sykes that police are there to help us do the right thing, and warned him, should he ever get into trouble, never to use his father's name for protection. Sykes got his first car after he married at age 17, and was later ticketed for running a red light which he firmly believed was amber. His father led him to the penalty clerk, where the young Sykes promptly paid his fine.
     Second, "the customer is always right." Sykes' early business partner was his strong-minded grandmother who grew chrysanthemums and sewed quilts, aprons and bonnets with mill scraps, which young Sykes sold door to door from his wagon. A weekly inventory kept track of sales, and receipts were split with 50% invested in more plants and mill scraps, 25% for grandmother and 25% for Sykes. Building a business required good people with good values working together.
     Hell, he suggested in a closing story, is having to feed yourself alone under severe restrictions. Heaven, by contrast, is working with others, even in difficult circumstances, for mutual benefit. Sykes' old neighborhood is gone today: home, church, buildings all demolished —temporary! But the values his neighborhood taught him to embody live on: truth, fairness and equity for the benefit of all!

New Member

GEORGE  MACBAIN  IV

Joined 1980
Rejoined 1999

Banking, Administration
Additional Active

Central Carolina Bank
P.O. Box 35607 (28235)
347-6022
FAX 347-6179

     Welcome to Charlotte Rotary, George.

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DID YOU KNOW?

We do not have a member whose Classification is:

• Air Conditioning Repairing
• Automobile Retailing
• Automobile Leasing
• Baking Retailing
• Bookselling
• Confectionery Retailing
• Furniture, Household Sales
• Hardware Retailing
• Office Management/ Leasing
• Petroleum, Wholesaling
• Pharmaceuticals Retailing
• Photography, Commercial
• Photography, Portrait
• Television Sales/Service

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     Martin Waters, who presided in President Worth's absence, thanked Sykes for his inspiring visit, remembering Byron's lines: "To be all you can be, you must dream of more."
     Earlier in the meeting Doug Booth introduced guests and visiting Rotarians, including a table of Sykes' Charlotte employees. Roger Sarow read headline news updates. John Lassiter's health and happiness compared lawyers at the pearly gates unfavorably treated to others seeking entrance. Following the pledge of allegiance. Ray Brietz led singing of "School Days," and Mike Elder gave the invocation.
     Others at the head table were Luther Fincher, Madine Fails, Jim Barnhardt and Don Carmichael.

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ANNOUNCEMENT

     Starting August 24, 1999, the four tables in the front right quadrant will be reserved for members of the Fellowship Committee. For a period of four consecutive weeks, the goal of this committee will be to enhance the fellowship of team members so that the committee will be better suited to address challenges of implementing the true "Spirit of Fellowship."

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POWELL'S
OBSERVATIONS

POWELL MAJORS

     The widow of Lee DuBow, Ira Jean Dubow, died on August 12, 1999.

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