Jeno Francesco Paulucci has exactly one approach to life — he always does exactly what he thinks is right.

Because if he doesn't like something, forget about it.

He's turned down two presidential Cabinet appointments because he didn't think he could answer to anybody else, except his wife. He walked out of a $40 million deal with Reynolds Tobacco because he thought its executives were arrogant and disrespectful.

He's a demanding employer with high standards. He expects people to work six, sometimes seven, days a week. Yet he also has been honored for hiring people deemed "unemployable" by others, such as the disabled and ex-convicts.

And at 88 years old he says he feels as though he's 48 and nowhere near ready to retire.

"I'm relaxed when I'm working. Relaxing makes me nervous," Paulucci said in an IBD interview.

Paulucci's contrarian approach has served him well. He created more than 70 food brands, including Florida Fresh Produce, Jeno's Pizza Rolls, Chun King Foods and Luigino's Inc., which makes frozen entrees under the Michelina and Budget Gourmet brands. His Michelina's brand, named for his mother, accounts for a quarter of frozen meals sold in North America. He has advised seven presidents, and been heralded as the world's No. 1 entrepreneur for 20 years by Ernst & Young.

As the founder, chairman and chief executive of the Centuria Group conglomerate, Paulucci owns five food companies, 23 factories worldwide, seven banks, a hotel, a restaurant and thousands of acres of real estate. He's also an author, chronicling his 70-year career in his new book, "Jeno: The Power of the Peddler."

Filling A Need

Paulucci began his career at age 10 selling fresh produce in Hibbing, Minn., during the Great Depression. From the beginning, he says, he constantly looked for a need to fulfill.

He started Chun King with $2,500 in 1947 because he liked Chinese cuisine but saw that people weren't widely familiar with it. You could get it in restaurants, but not stores. Why not put it there?

So Paulucci started doing some legwork. He went from town to town and looked in phone books for Chinese restaurants. The more, the better. He figured he'd have a ready market for canned Chinese food in cities with lots of Chinese restaurants because there was already exposure and demand for the cuisine.

But he faced a big challenge. There didn't seem to be a way to can chop suey and put it on store shelves while keeping the vegetables crisp and the meat tender.

He tossed around numerous ideas, rejecting each one as unworkable. Then he started thinking differently. Who said you had to put it all in one can?

It still needed to be convenient to attract consumers. So Paulucci put the vegetables and meat in separate cans, stacked them on top of each other and taped them together. The Chun King Divider Pak flew off the shelves. He built the brand with memorable advertising and consistent quality, and sold it to Reynolds Tobacco for $63 million in 1963.

Paulucci developed a strict formula for success: Come up with the idea, research it thoroughly, build the brand and sell it. He repeated the formula over and over: all told, those deals would be worth more than $2 billion today.

But it's never been a coldhearted game to him — Paulucci invests a great deal of himself into each venture. And he insists on holding to high standards for both his products and his personnel.

Paulucci knows that satisfied workers mean higher production rates. So he invested heavily in his employees. He offered generous wages and benefits. And although workers at all of his factories are unionized, he proudly notes that there's never been a strike or work stoppage.

"I always had a practice that if I saw that the economy was growing and wages and cost of living was going up, I would voluntarily open the contract. And say, 'let's do a little better job for our employees,'" he said.

He made a point of hiring those who were normally passed over for employment because of past drug addiction, criminal convictions or disability.

He was repaid in dedication and loyalty.

Paulucci knows firsthand what it's like to be discriminated against. Growing up, he was confronted with prejudice against Italians. Rather than discourage him, it fueled his determination to succeed.

"I think when people are discriminated against they should take it as a challenge," he said, "and find ways and means of doing a better job than the one (who) discriminates against them."

Paulucci works seven days a week, although he spends half of one of those days working at home.

He looks for employees who share his work ethic. He interviews spouses to make sure they won't complain about the demanding hours at his company. He advises people who want to be successful entrepreneurs to "marry a mate who's going to let you do your own thing."

Paulucci believes in leading by example.

"I am here at 7 o'clock in the morning and I'm here on Saturdays," he said. "My employees feel a little embarrassed if they don't come in by 8."

Love What You Do

But for Paulucci, it's all about loving what you do. "In order to be successful in your work and your business, you got to love your job," he said. "It's got to be fun, even the problems. The problems are part of the daily life and you got to turn those problems into opportunities if you can."

Despite his astronomical achievements in business, he considers his real success to be what he's done for his fellow man.

"I've never seen anybody with a crest on his chest," he said. "We're all the same. Just because you have a little more money doesn't make you any better."

Paulucci keeps himself humble with a framed article hanging by his desk. It recounts an incident when he was 26 and arrested for chasing a man down a street in a drunken rage while wielding two butcher knives. He spent time behind bars for assault.

The realization that he could've killed someone woke him up. He made some changes, quitting his rabble-rousing and committing himself to his family. And he decided to devote part of his life to helping the less fortunate. He supports several organizations that provide rehabilitation to prisoners. He founded numerous charities and foundations dedicated to revitalizing communities, creating jobs and helping the poor.

Paulucci believes reinvesting a part of profits into the community is the duty of successful businesspeople.

"I think that no matter what profession or business that a person is in that they should care not only about their family, but (also) about other people . . . and to contribute to your own community."

BY TRANG HO