Do-Right Dudley does all right.

• Position: Do-Right Dudley Carpet Inc. owner Carl Dudley

"I've got big blue letters on the back of my white Lincoln that say: I love Jesus and Jesus loves you," says Clinton's Carl "Do-Right" Dudley. "People have told me, 'If I had a Lincoln, I wouldn't do that.' I say, 'Have you got a Lincoln?'"

To the owner of Do-Right Dudley Carpet Inc., there's a direct connection between living right and doing all right.

Dudley, 58, has done all right. With $1 million in inventory in his football-field-length store, sales last year in the $700,000 range and a 43% increase in net profits over 1991, Dudley says as far as he knows he owns the largest independent carpet store in the state.

His bustling mail-order profits would be even better, he says, if he didn't give churches all over the country a big break. For them, he marks up the prices 75 cents a yard over wholesale. They send him two checks. One is for the cost of the carpet and freight. The additional 75 cents a yard goes out to Gospel Crusade, an interdenominational ministry based in Bradenton, Fla., where Dudley is on the board of the directors. He also donates profits to High Pastures, a Christian retreat in Burnsville, and the Royal Home (for unwed mothers) in Salemburg.

Born in Salemburg, Dudley is the son of a tenant tobacco farmer, the baby of nine children. "I didn't intend on dying as a tenant farmer,"...