However, for George Gellert, now 87 years old, the grind still hasn’t stopped.
“My mother would say to me, if you’re one minute late, it’s the same as being an hour late,” he recalled to Fortune.
“I talk to him for 15 minutes every morning from 4:45 to 5:00. Then I work out an hour before tennis, and then I start my tennis from 6:00 to 7:30 and I’m in the office a little after 8:00.”
When Gellert first started his career at his father-in-law’s company, Atalanta, in 1966, he was tasked with opening mail (back when they didn’t have email, he joked). At the time, it may have seemed like monotonous clerical work, but it opened his eyes to the entire inner workings of the company—a lesson he says young people of today can learn from.
“Get your hands dirty,” he tells Fortune. “Start at the bottom.”
It’s on companies to do better about fostering an environment where junior employees can grow, Gellert says.
“You gotta motivate them to feel you,” he says. “They’re always wondering, what’s my future? What’s the next step? So, you have to really make sure that they have a career path going forward, because if not, they’ll leave.”
That also means picking employees who are growth-oriented to begin with: “I make a joke if they play golf, I don’t want to hire them. They have too much time,” he says.
“Find satisfaction in what you do,” Gellert says. “Try to keep a low-key profile. When success comes to you, you know you’ve worked hard.”
“We enjoy what we’re doing here,” Gellert said.
