Fred Gratzon, founder of Fairfield's
(Iowa) Great
Midwestern Ice Cream and Telegroup, is an
entrepreneur raconteur provocateur. In 1968 Fred
graduated sine laude whatsoever from Rutgers University as a Fine Art major.
He never held a job for more than two months and is one of only five people in
the entire history of the United States Government to have been fired from a
civil service job. In 1979 with no money, no
experience, and no knowledge of how to make ice cream, he founded The Great
Midwestern Ice Cream Company. In 1984 his ice cream was judged by People
magazine to be the best ice cream in America. Playboy made the same
declaration in 1986. In 1989, again with no money
and no knowledge or experience of telecommunications Fred founded Telegroup in
a spare room in his house. Telegroup became an international long distance
carrier and grew to 1100 employees with $400 million in annual sales.
Fred's companies have appeared on Inc magazine's list of the 500
fastest growing companies in America four times. In 1995 Telegroup was the
second fastest. Fred, ever the entrepreneurial
pyromaniac, is currently lighting new fires and using The Lazy Way to
Success as his invincible formula. At Fred's insistence, this observation
has been added from Sunthar's
post to the Abhinava forum, announcing this interview: "Fred Gratzon is a
natural-born American Taoist, adept of 'non-doing' (wu-wei = no way!),
who deserves to be crowned honorary 'do-nothing' mayor of Benares, the holy
city of the Hindus. The 'Lord of the Universe'
(Vishvan�tha), addicted to 'idle intoxication' (bahri
alang), would have surely approved..."
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