Alaska Business Hall of Fame Laureate James Udelhoven.

• Author: Anderson, Tasha
• Position: SPECIAL SECTION: Junior Achievement - Interview

2017 Alaska Business Hall of Fam Laureate James Udelhoven, CEO of Udelhoven, interviewed with Tasha Anderson, Alaska Business Monthly's Associate Editor; below are excerpts from the interview.

ABM: How did you get your start in the business world?

Udelhoven: I came to Alaska in 1968, and in 19701 started the business up in the Cook Inlet area. I was encouraged to do that by an employee of ARCO by the name of Jimmy Pruitt, because he got to know me and liked my business ethics and work ethic.

ABM: Where did you grow up?

Udelhoven: I grew up on a dairy farm in Wisconsin. My dad was my first teacher on work ethics, hard work, and how to handle money. Of course, at that time my family didn't have a lot, but they worked hard, and they were proud, and I walked away from there with a lot of stuff that I kept with me for a lot of years.

ABM: What were your parents like and what was your family life and upbringing like?

Udelhoven: Well, life was different then. I had five brothers and one sister, and all of my brothers served in the military. My oldest brother fought in the Pacific in World War II, and the next brother volunteered. And so when I was seventeen, to do something different, I joined the US Navy and volunteered for aviation. And I got a tremendous education out of it; they gave me some of their best schools at the time, so that's sort of what started putting me on track for where I'm at today.

ABM: What opportunities led to the early success of your business?

Udelhoven: Well, you have an idea of what you want to do, and how you want to get there--but it doesn't really end up like you first envisioned it, because pretty soon you got one employee, then you got three, then you got fifteen. And I had had people actually step up and say they wanted to finance my business, and I never did that. I started out with no money, no business education. I basically don't recommend doing what I did to the young people today because my education was very costly. I learned as I went, I was always very honest, very ethical; I always surrounded myself with really good employees. And my real education came in the late 80s, during that recession, and I survived that, and having done that then I set new standards for the corporation.

ABM: Do you believe there is value in educating young people about free enterprise?

Udelhoven: There definitely is a value in educating them about free enterprise. In my case it started with my parents on very small issues. But...