(soft music) - I'm Norm Silverstein.

Thanks for joining us.

We're in good company today with Philip Saunders.

As a successful entrepreneur many times over, you may have heard Phil's name and connection with the Saunders College of Business at RIT.

His support of local educational institutions continues to advance research and cultivate the next generation of entrepreneurs.

However, his impact in our region goes far beyond the college campus.

A longtime resident of Livingston County, Phil has been applying his business insights since he was a young man working nights on the New York State throughway.

His experience led him to found a national empire of modern truck stops known today as TravelCenters of America.

Since then, Phil has gone on to start a number of businesses, the Sugar Creek convenience stores, Griffith Energy and Genesee Regional Bank, to name just a few.

With a belief in hard work and organization as a formula for success, Phil has become an example of the power of entrepreneurship, what it can do for a region.

We are pleased to have him join us today and to hear his perspective.

Phil, I mentioned a few of the companies that you founded or were involved in, but if I mentioned them all, I'd have to have a book.

So when did you first realize you wanted to be an entrepreneur?

- I think when I was very young.

When I was growing up, in high school, I had a couple of paper routes.

I started making skis and selling them.

I lived down on near Kenosha Lake, so I would make water skis in the summertime.

It was when water skiing was just starting to become popular.

So I started making skis, made that into a little business.

And candidly, I think it was in my family.

Great-grandfather ran a grocery store down in Driftwood, Pennsylvania.

And then my grandfather had a hardware in Oleona.

And then my father had a petroleum business here in Rochester called Independent Gas and Oil.

So we've never known anything, I think, other than working for ourselves.

- Well, let's take a look at where all this began.

You were born on Ambrose Street here in Rochester, but moved as a young man to Livingston County.

Today, you could live anywhere.

So what keeps you here?

- Well, that's a good question.

Other than the fact that I have some deep roots here now.

Back in the early, late sixties, I bought a farm in Livingston County and that's really became a serious route for me.

Actually, the down payment for it was given to me.

My mother committed suicide and she left me like $20,000 in a will, and I used that as a down payment on it.

My father, before he passed away in 72, came there and visited, and trout fished with me.

All my kids have grown up there.

And my sister spent a lot of time there and my brother.

So it's really the only place in upstate New York that really has all of the Saunders roots left to it.

And plus I just like the region.

That's why I'm here.

- Well, growing up, I understand most of your friends were farmers.

You weren't a farmer, but you actually picked potatoes in the summer.

Is that true, to earn a little cash?

- No, we used to pick potatoes in Lavonia for 5 cents a bushel.

But at lunch at the Windgate farm, they'd take us in and give us a really big, actually a dinner.

And we were so lazy, we didn't wanna pick potatoes in the afternoon, but we still went back and did it.

But almost all my friends owned farms and I'd spent a lot of time with them on their farms.

So I almost became a farmer by accident just spending time with all my friends that were farmers.

And most of 'em, we played sports together.

And so it was just a natural thing to hang around with 'em.

- But you learned something from them about the value of hard work I understand.

- Well, that's for sure.

And I think starting with potatoes and a nickel a bushel on your knees.

But yes, we would, I'd help 'em do chores in the morning, help 'em milk cows, help 'em do haying, and they worked really hard, but they built strong bodies.

And because of that, we always had very good football teams in Lavonia when I was there.

- Phil, I understand as a younger man, you were quite an athlete.

- You know, I was, and home life was a little bit complicated at our house, so sports was a great relief for me.

So I started young in Little League.

In fact, I helped organize Little League in Lavonia out there, and there was a picture of me when I was raising the money and when we finally had our first organizational meeting, so on and so forth.

But I played, lettered in football for four years.

I lettered in basketball for my sophomore and junior year, and I didn't, wasn't there for a senior year.

And that's a whole nother story we didn't cover today.

We're not going to.

And in baseball, I pitched no hitters, a junior in high school, and also batted .489, which is, it was for a long time the school record, I don't know if it still is or not.

We got some good players out there right now.

So that might be going down the drain.

I liked football the best and then basketball the next best, baseball third.

And you'd think, well, you'd think you would like that best, but you don't have the team working baseball that you have in any other sports.

And I love the teamwork of it, but I think the key thing that I took away from those years and the fact that maybe it was because I was a good athlete, is that I took that same philosophy into business, that when I was in a business, I wanted to win at that business.

I wanted to put people around me that wanted to win.

And I've had a lot of people that worked for me that were academic All-Americans in sports, in college, and I was always attracted to that type of person.

Up until my mid sixties, we still had a company basketball team.

We had one for Sugar Creek stores, one for travel ports, and one for Griffith Energy.

And we used to play games.

Be back and forth between each other every week in the wintertime.

But it was that competitive thing and I think it, it spread right on into sport, from sports into business for me.

- You attended Hobart College for a while?

- [Phil] I did.

- And then I understand that you were very good at math and accounting, but you didn't like some of the things like foreign languages.

And eventually your father invited you to come back and work with him.

Is is that how you got your first interest in truck stops or gas stations?

- Well, it, yes.

What actually happened is I was working on the New York State Thruway.

And when I was at college, I had gotten married and I was living in Seneca Falls and I was working on a farm there for room and board, working on the New York State Thruway nights, and then going to college in the daytime.

And candidly, it all added up to doing a bad job.

Plus I was learning foreign languages and about Catholicism and all kinds of things that I, I thought I went there to learn how to be a businessman.

And I guess that came in the second and third year.

So I had no interest in the place.

So I was home for Thanksgiving, and my dad and two other gentlemen had started a small truck stop here in Rochester, New York, and they weren't doing very good with it.

So I said, well, you know, I'm on the Thruway and it just opened, and all these drivers tell me the things you need at a truck stop.

And so I know quite a bit about it and he says, well, if you know so much about it, why don't you come back and run this place for us?

- Well, you did a little more than run the place, didn't you?

- Yes, well, I actually went there as a worker to begin with, and within a couple of years I took over running it and saw that I finally did make a profit and spent a lot of time soliciting customers.

But we were off the beaten path.

The Thruway had opened up, so there was no east west traffic by it.

And the only traffic that really came there was the traffic coming in from the South Up Route 15A.

So it had a very limited market, but from it, the drivers were telling me about what they needed.

The interstates were starting to open.

In the Cannelly, there weren't a lot of services on the interstate, so ventured out and started winning national in Virginia, just north of Richmond.

- So how does one go from that one truck stop in upstate to a place in Virginia, to what becomes eventually a national chain?

- Well, you know, I believe there's always a little luck attached to everything.

And it was a time when the interstates were just opening up.

The major oil companies knew that there was a market there and they wanted to sell petroleum, but they weren't interested in getting into the complications of a truck stop.

It was a little more sophisticated than a gas station, a lot bigger investment.

So Gulf Oil came to me in Rochester, knew what we were doing here, and suggested, once I'd already picked out the site, that they would like to work with me and they would do the financing.

Only one little hook, I had to buy their petroleum, which was okay, but it was a little extra expensive than it would normally be if I could buy on the open market.

But at the time, it was a good start.

- [Norm] You still see those signs when you travel just about anywhere on an interstate.

How does that make you feel?

- It makes me feel good.

And they've done a good job with a company, and there's still a few people working there that worked for me, that makes me feel good also.

And they're really the pride of the industry as far as I'm concerned.

And they do a great job.

High moral character and run top-notch facilities.

- So this was really one of your first businesses that you started.

You're still a young man and then you go on to become what some people have said is a serial entrepreneur.

I mean, when you look at the businesses you've founded or have been involved with, Sugar Creek, convenience stores, Griffith Energy, so many others, how have you been able to identify all these opportunities throughout your career?

- Well, when I left Ryder, candidly, I had enough money.

I was only 36 years old and I thought I might wanna just retire.

And that lasted about six months.

But I had understood the petroleum business, and as it got bigger, I got involved in distribution and buying and shipping stuff on the pipelines and pipeline terminals, so on and so forth.

So it was a natural thing for me to get into the distribution side of it.

So I acquired a very small company up here down near Warsaw and Pearl Creek, New York.

They had like four trucks at the time, and we built it into, I believe the biggest distributor in the northeast United States.

We're doing well over 500 million gallons a year and had about a fleet of about 300 trucks.

So it grew quite a bit.

- I understand that you have a friend who convinced you to get involved with a bank, Genesee Regional Bank, but when you got into it, you found it needed a little more help than than you expected, is that right?

- Well, that's true.

Actually, a friend of mine who had been my lawyer in business since I started, and had always been great to me, so he calls me one day and says, I want you to do me a favor.

He said, I wanna buy this small little bank, but I need some help financially.

You don't have to do anything, just help me finance it.

So I put in half the money and we wound up buying this little bank called Lending Guarantee, which we then changed the name to Genesee Regional Bank.

But within a couple of years, sitting on the sidelines, the bank had gotten under some pretty bad problems with the Office of the Control of the Currency, OCC, and they were literally gonna shut it down.

So I had to step in with some more money.

Loan my friend who started it some more money, so that he could still be an equal partner and took over the chairmanship and brought in a new management team.

And we've made a pretty nice bank out of it.

- And I understand it's pretty committed to funding things in the region that would be the first choice.

- Absolutely.

And we like to fund mid-size businesses, small businesses, entrepreneurial type businesses, and which I understand.

And I like doing it.

I like helping young businesses grow and I know enough about the finances of 'em and reading a balance sheet and things like this that I also think I can contribute, not only loan money, but we, I think I can contribute to their success.

- I know I'm only scratching the surface with companies and organizations you've been involved with.

Any guess about how many jobs you've saved or created in the region over the years?

- Gee, I don't know.

But between TA in Georgetown, we had a few thousand people in total working for us.

I've had a lot of great people work for me and a few of 'em I've made into millionaires, which I also like that side of what I've accomplished in my life.

I still see a lot of 'em.

And they were loyal employees and a lot of 'em became great friends and makes me feel really good.

- Well, in addition to creating some millionaires, you also gave some money away.

I understand about 18 million to RIT to help found the Saunders College of Business and to pay for scholarships, you know, what did you see in RIT that that attracted you?

- Well, as I had told a lot of people, when I first had the truck stop out on Jefferson Road, we used to use a lot of our nighttime and part-time employees.

I hired from RIT.

And they were always great workers and they were very practical people.

These were people that you could tell when they got outta college, were gonna go work.

If they had to start cleaning the garbage cans in a place of business, that's what they're gonna do.

But they were gonna get ahead.

And so I was always impressed with the type of student that they had there, and their work programs helped that, I think, an awful lot.

So when Al Simone asked me to get involved in the business school, which is right up my alley, I bid on that pretty quickly and I've really liked it.

I've enjoyed the whole experience.

I go there and I do talk to the students some.

I've watched it grow.

We're coming up the ranks as far as our ratings go nationally.

So I'm really proud of it and proud of what the people at RIT are doing with it.

They're really doing a good job.

- Well, we did a little research and we understand that when you visit your college of business, you're treated like a rock star.

So how does that make you feel?

- You know, I'm a pretty modest person, so it usually embarrasses me a little bit.

At times, I think it's a con job that they've set 'em up to do that, but I don't think they do really.

- Well, I don't think they do either.

You were also very generous to the University of Rochester Medical Center, $10 million, I believe, at one time, and more before that.

What made you decide to get involved with URMC?

- Well, I would say Joel, Joel Seligman had a lot to do with it, but I've always had a soft spot for the University of Rochester Strong.

My dad went through a couple of bad years of being treated for cancer there.

They did a good job for him before he passed away in 1972.

And that was the first donations I made to the University of Rochester Strong was in 1972.

So I, you know, my string of giving to them really started back in the seventies.

And then the opportunity to name this building, which was a research building, which sort of tied into what I was already spot doing with them there.

So it came along and I put up the money for it and feel really good about it.

- Do you ever talk to other philanthropists?

I understand you're friends with Tom Golisano about places that deserve support where you feel like can you can really make a difference?

- You know, I do.

And at times I've had a few people say, well, you know, I give a lot of money too, but I don't want to.

I keep it very quiet.

And he said, why don't you do it that way?

And I said, you know, I think doing it and letting people know that you're doing puts peer pressure on other people.

And quite often some of the people that say they give away a lot of money, but they don't want anybody know about it.

I don't know if they're really even telling me the truth, if they're giving away any money, but I think the peer pressure of it is important to get other people to follow the lead of other people in our community.

And I would say Tom is one of the greatest at at that thing.

I mean, I think he's even influenced me in my giving.

- I think he's influenced a lot of people.

- I think he has too.

- Well, I, I've heard that you've set some examples of what people can do at different ages.

When you were 73, you paddled the Yukon on a fundraising trip.

That was for special needs autism.

- Yes, and it was a contest we were competing about against boats from all over the world.

I think we were the only non-professional team in the race.

- Came in fourth, I understand.

- Well, I think third.

Some people say fourth because the first place was two guys in kayaks that were running as a team, and they had two kayaks.

So they were saying that's first and second.

We were always saying, no, no, you were 18, you were first.

So at any rate, they were in a Kayak.

We were in a five man canoe that weighed about 450 pounds.

So they definitely had an advantage and a speed advantage against us, but we still finished third.

It was a great experience and I don't know if I'm ready to do it again, but I I do do some other guideboat racing in the Adirondacks in the summertime.

Haven't done it for two years, and I don't know if I'm done for good or not.

- Well, it doesn't seem like you are, but love to keep us posted on what you're doing next.

You know, I know that in business, getting back to business for a moment, it's often said that you have to experience a failure or two before you get to your successes.

Did you ever have that experience where something didn't quite work out the way you had hoped?

- You know, I really never have.

I think I came close.

In the trucking business one time when I had the truck stop business, I also had a lot of spare time in the facility at night when we weren't using it, had fuel pumps and everything.

So I started a trucking company called Meat Dispatch, and we would haul from Rob State New York to Florida for Neisner Brothers and then bring different products back from Florida and we would haul meat from Toronto to New York City.

That's where the name came from.

And really struggled with it, but did make it profitable, but it was close, and a lot of it, and not trying to throw any stones at the state of New York, but it was almost impossible in that era for a trucking company domiciled in New York State to really make money because of the workman's comp laws.

The sales tax on the trucks was, other states didn't charge sales tax to over the road equipment.

But it was close, but I got out of it and sold it and made a little profit.

- I understand you have some thoughts about what the elected officials and the state could be doing to encourage more entrepreneurship and to promote business?

- Well, one, you know, this is a state that I think we need good entrepreneurs and we've certainly bred a lot of 'em here at Rochester, New York.

But we're doing so many things with our taxation that we are really taking that high wage earner, who are the people that are starting businesses thing.

We're pushing 'em out of the state.

And I mean, I go to Florida, everybody says, are you a Florida resident yet?

I said, no, I'm not.

And I don't think I ever will, but I've got several of my friends who were entrepreneurs in New York state that aren't here anymore.

And I think we're losing some good talent because of the way that we're looking at high wage earners and the people they employ and all the different things they do.

And it's a tough state when it comes to that.

- Well, I've heard that you're quite a booster of the workforce in Livingston County and in upstate.

You feel these are hardworking people and you'd compare them to anybody in the country.

- Well, that's definitely true.

And if you talk to most anybody that runs a business in Rochester, they all love to get employees from Livingston County.

And I'm also involved in American Rock Salt out in Livingston County, and we have 300 miners working there out on the executive committee and was the president of it for the first five years.

And we got a great workforce.

These are hardworking people.

We are in a union, which I'm normally not in favor of, but this one works very well for the people and it works well for us.

And these guys, when it's tough times in the wintertime, they show up for work seven days a week for a month straight.

They're just incredible workers and they're physically strong, because a lot of 'em grew up on farms and in a rural environment.

- [Norm] What do you think about the next generation of entrepreneurs?

Are you seeing a lot of people like this hard workers?

- I see some, but I don't think you see as many as you used to see.

And I think it's, it's getting so complicated, even myself, when we, we started a new fuel company about three years ago called Valley Fuel or Valley Energy, and just the paperwork to get a company going today and all the different regulations for the people and all the licenses you gotta get, it really is a daunting task.

It's one, you know, when I went first went in business, you know, I think it took me about 30 minutes worth of paperwork to be incorporated, get a New York State Sales tax license.

And I think that was it.

And I was in business.

But today.

- Things have gotten a lot more complicated, haven't they?

- Yeah, it's terribly complicated.

Now I'm not saying it isn't, and that isn't just a New York State problem.

I think it's become complicated universally and because of cybersecurity and all the other things that even makes it more complicated today.

- You're still giving back in a number of other ways.

I know that you're on many boards.

What are some of the organizations that you're contributing to or taking part in or just contributing even your time and expertise?

- I've been involved somewhat in the Boys and Girls Club, which I think is great.

Dwayne Mahoney in Rochester does a great job with it and they need a lot of help over there.

Other than that, we do spend some time and donate to a lot of different organizations.

We've given away about 50 million so far.

And I'm really, you know, I think I'm just getting started unfortunately but, or fortunately, however that may be.

- How do you decide where to share your philanthropy?

- I think in just looking at things that need our help.

I've been involved with a upcoming route called YE, which is Young Entrepreneurs.

I found that quite rewarding.

- [Norm] Gail Yates organization.

- And who's done a great job with it.

And we have the Saunders entrepreneurs there every year, which is a national competition that comes in.

We've been in involved with EnCompass, which is part of the Norman Howard School.

- [Norm] Right, right.

And the Sands Brothers are.

- Right.

And in fact, Richard got me involved in it a little bit.

And so we started EnCompass program in Livingston County for kids that are, need a little help in school and maybe they don't have the greatest home life, so we keep 'em after school and mentor them and if they're having trouble in different subjects then we help 'em with their subjects.

And it's been a very good success and we've been sponsoring that every year.

And I guess we've been doing that for about 10 or 12 years now.

- Well, I have to say, it doesn't sound like retirement's right around the corner.

So what's next for Phil Saunders?

- Well, I've got this Valley Fuel going and it's a nice little company and I wanna see that grow into something and it's got some great people working in it.

Some people that worked for me in the old company that were, when the Griffith, when we sold it, they moved it quite a few of the jobs to Canada in the accounting area and some of the different areas they let the people go that were.

So I brought them back in to do that.

At the bank, we really wanna see it become our, the premier regional bank in the area helping small to mid-size businesses.

So those are two of my short term goals right there.

And that's where I spend a good share of my time.

I still spend maybe a day a week involved in the salt mine, but that's got good management and good people and I'm really just a minor owner of it in a lot of respects, but I enjoy seeing it, doing what it's doing and growing.

So those are the three things that I work on and hope they're, they all continue to be successful.

- Well, after talking to you, I have to say, I wouldn't bet against any company that Phil Saunders is involved with.

Seems like almost everything that you've touched has turned out well, and you know, I think people should know about how many jobs you've saved, created, and we will probably create in the future here.

So thank you and thank you for watching.

You can also watch this episode and past shows online at WXXI.org and we'll see you next time on Norm & Company.

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