INTRO
TONY: Welcome back to the podcast. Business today can feel like controlled chaos. AI is changing how we work. Global trade is shifting. Tariffs, regulations, and supply chains can change almost overnight. And through all that noise, an entrepreneur still has to figure out what actually deserves their attention.
Our guest today has been doing that for more than five decades. He walked away from a successful career as a CFO and bought a tiny seafood business that had one primary product and just one telephone line. From there, things got interesting. He reinvented products, took on international markets, made some expensive mistakes, and encountered everything from government obstacles to questionable business practices. He eventually found himself traveling through remote seafood villages with chickens in the hallways, scorpions in his luggage, and geckos on the ceiling.
Along the way, he built that cottage business into a global company designed not to be sold but to endure for generations. And through all of it, he kept coming back to a remarkably small number of principles about competition, trust, focus, and growth.
So what did he figure out that so many businesses miss? And why do some companies endure while others disappear? Meet Terry Conway. Hi, Terry. Welcome to The Tony DUrso Show.
TERRY: Thank you.
TONY: You've been around a while and had a long career. You've had a chance to observe what works and what doesn't. Can you start from the very beginning? How did you go from CFO to business owner?

INTERVIEW – PART 1 (BACKSTORY: FROM CFO TO COTTAGE BUSINESS)
TERRY: At a young age, in my early twenties, my focus was on eventually owning my own business. How do I prepare for that? Because I'd be investing my family's fortune in this. It had to work. There was no fallback.
The idea was: get a great business education, work for really good people who knew how to compete—which was not taught in business school—and eventually take responsibility for a department in a fast-growing, highly competitive company. Get a seat at the table.
At age thirty-one, I became CFO of a very fast-growing, highly profitable poultry company. They had never had a CFO before—I was the first one, and it was a bit of a mess when I arrived. But ten years later, we were the best in our industry as a financial organization. Good loans, good financing, good succession planning, and great acquisitions I helped initiate.
But there was always that lingering thought: I'd really like to own my own business. And even after ten successful years as CFO, I kept wondering if I was ever going to find that opportunity. Then it showed up on my doorstep. It was a strange doorstep—not a thriving company. It was a cottage business. One product, sourced locally, sold locally. The owners had been trying to retire for a number of years. There was no succession planning. But I saw some opportunities there.
And most importantly, I was able to own one hundred percent. That was always very important to me—not having other people looking over my shoulder saying what I should or shouldn't have done. Total ownership, total responsibility.
TONY: What did you inherit when you bought the company? What did you actually get?
TERRY: It was very regional. One product. The oldest seafood processor in America, with a good brand. The product was a soft-shell crab—a seafood delicacy only produced in one small part of the Chesapeake Bay. Great product, but limited exposure and limited supply.
The company had just one telephone line. I asked why and they said, "Well, I can only talk to one person at a time, so I just need one line." I thought: what about growth?
So that's what I inherited—a regional company, a decent brand, and one product. But strangely enough, in this small town there were two other wonderful products: crab cakes made with a lot of crab meat, and pasteurized crab meat you could eat right out of the can. Both were delicious.
I thought: there's an opportunity to move into other crab products based on the expertise of the people in this town. And when they told me that soft crabs only come from this one part of the Chesapeake Bay where the water is brackish—fresh water mixing with seawater—I thought: brackish water exists all over the world. We don't have to limit ourselves to just this one area. It turned out I was right.
So what didn't look like much actually had real opportunity. The soft crabs could be sourced globally. And those crab cakes and pasteurized crab meat were unlike anything I'd ever tasted—loaded with crab meat, consistently fresh. I saw something others had missed.
TONY: You definitely had a vision. What were the biggest early decisions that changed the whole direction of the company?
TERRY: The first thing was improving the quality of the product. The crabs came in five different sizes. I found equipment to make the sizing consistent—very important for restaurants that need to put the correct soft crab on a plate every time.
The second thing was how we froze them. The company was using an archaic twenty-hour blast freezer. It took twenty hours to freeze the crab and in the process partially spoiled it and diminished the taste. I found a way to individually quick-freeze the crabs in thirty-eight minutes instead of twenty hours. That made an enormous difference. That innovation alone gave us a tremendous competitive advantage.
We also put some automation into the plant to reduce costs and increase capacity. And then I did a little marketing—but honestly, it was mostly up to me to hit the road and close the deals. Get the product on the shelf. Get it into distribution.
So the structure was simple: improve the products, process them more efficiently, and use marketing to generate leads—then close the deals. Those three things were always on my to-do list. That's it.
TONY: You never owned a company before. You had never sold anything or run a plant. And yet you bought this business. What kept you focused when things got chaotic?

INTERVIEW – PART 2 (CORE VALUES: TRUST, COLLABORATION & COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE)
TERRY: It was the core values. The first and most important was trust. I learned at an early age that being a trustworthy person was essential. If you want to grow a business, trust is everything. But to be a trusted company, you have to have trusted people and trusted products—then it works.
The second core value was collaboration. If you set up your structure to encourage collaboration, you will innovate. And with innovation comes competitive advantage. That's exactly how we broke into Japan, which was a largely closed market at the time. We had a quality product nobody else had—and quality became our key to the door. We shipped containers to Europe the same way. That competitive advantage opened markets.
Those two core values—trust and collaboration driving innovation—have to be with you early in the game. Without them, you can't grow effectively.
TONY: What were the toughest challenges you faced as a leader?
TERRY: The toughest challenge was communicating our standard of excellence up and down the company every single day. Are we on target? Are we improving our products?
I'll share a little story. When we were in Asia, a fellow came to me and said, "Mr. Terry, I want to make you a rich man." I asked how. He said, "You take some of the not-so-good product and mix it in with the good stuff—nobody knows the difference."
I said no. We lose our trust. We lose our brand. But that kind of thinking—a little shortcut here, a little shortcut there—it permeated certain environments. I had to keep my people focused. That was the biggest challenge.
I also had some government interference early on in Maryland. When you're developing a better product and pulling ahead of your competition, people notice—and not always in a good way. But as long as I had the best product and the market wanted it, I was okay.
TONY: Aside from government issues and regulatory surprises, how do you decide what actually deserves your attention when business gets chaotic?

INTERVIEW – PART 3 (THREE PRINCIPLES: PRODUCTS, PROCESSING & CLOSING DEALS)
TERRY: Business is chaos all the time. Things change constantly. How do you deal with that? You keep your focus on three things. One: continuously improve the quality and value of your products—you can never stop, because a competitor will catch up and you'll lose your edge. Two: process those products at a competitive advantage—be more efficient than your competition. Three: use marketing to develop leads and close the deals.
If those are the only three things on your to-do list when you get up in the morning, they will get you through almost anything. But you've got to keep the focus there. If you start wandering—thinking you need to do this other thing or that other thing—if it's not in service of those three principles, it's not going to work.
When I went into the crab business, I had never sold anything. I had never run a plant. But if I kept my focus on improving the products, processing them efficiently, and closing the deals, I was fine. It sounds simple. But I haven't seen it work well in many companies because they lose that focus.
TONY: So you bought this company knowing you'd reinvent it—knowing the industry, the markets, the product all had to be built from scratch. What gave you the confidence to do that?
TERRY: It was a risk. But I felt I had prepared myself well. And if I was ever going to do this, this was the opportunity—especially with one hundred percent ownership. It was worth giving up a very successful CFO career for something I'd always wanted to do. My friend said I had rocks in my head, giving up that position to buy a little cottage business I knew nothing about. Maybe. But I saw the opportunity.
TONY: And that's Terry Conway. You can learn more about Terry and his book, Business is Simple, at TerryConway-Biz.com. That's T-E-R-R-Y C-O-N-W-A-Y dash B-I-S dot com.
Something Terry just said is worth thinking about. He improved the product. He found ways to process it more efficiently. He increased capacity, marketed it, and then got out there and closed the deals. That sounds straightforward—but think about the environment entrepreneurs are operating in today. Technology is changing almost daily. AI is reshaping how businesses operate. Global trade and supply chains continue to shift. You can't control everything happening around your business, but you can control what you build, how well you serve your customers, and whether you're willing to get out there and sell it.

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And now back to Terry Conway. Before the break, he explained how he reinvented the company—improving the product, automating production, and closing deals on the road. Now let's go deeper into what kept him focused and what it taught him about growing in international markets.

INTERVIEW – PART 4 (INTERNATIONAL MARKETS: HUMILITY AS THE KEY)
TONY: You eventually moved into international markets. What did that teach you about growing a business and expanding into places where everything—the culture, the protocol, the way of doing business—was completely different?
TERRY: People kept asking me: when you go international, you're dealing with multiple religious groups, different cultures, and completely different ways of doing business. How do you handle that?
The key was humility. Humility will get you to the finish line faster than almost anything else. If you go into Thailand and say, "Tell me about your holidays, your religious traditions—I want to learn, and then I can adapt from there"—you'll get far. But if you walk in saying, "I'm from America and this is how we do things," you're going to get shut down fast. Humility opens doors. It just makes perfect sense.
TONY: And during that process—internationally and stateside—what were the biggest mistakes that taught you valuable lessons?

INTERVIEW – PART 5 (THE BORNEO MISTAKE: THE COST OF NOT BEING THOROUGH)
TERRY: There's a way of doing things I believe in strongly: thoroughness. If you genuinely examine both sides of everything, you won't make that many big mistakes.
But I made a doozy when I wasn't thorough enough. I went into Borneo—the Indonesian part—with the idea of building a fully integrated operation: farming, processing, freezing, shipping, marketing, everything. A first for us. I thought I had been very thorough. We got the crabs, took them to molt, and they wouldn't molt.
The crabs looked exactly like the ones in Thailand, Indonesia, and Myanmar—but they were actually a subspecies. Slightly different, very hard to detect visually, and they simply would not molt in captivity. I had wasted significant company resources setting up a farm and plant, and then the crabs wouldn't perform. I wasn't thorough enough. I didn't test that before committing. It was a pretty costly mistake.
From that point on, especially when investing significant money, I became very deliberate about being super thorough—testing everything and taking the time to do it right. You learn from it instead of repeating it. I made a lot of little mistakes after that, but never a doozy like that one again.
TONY: You know, this is exactly where Terry's story intersects with something I talk about all the time. He didn't buy that company thinking only about the next quarter. He knew exactly where he wanted it to go. Succession wasn't something he suddenly started worrying about when he was ready to leave—longevity was part of the thinking from the beginning. That's vision.
Right now there's an incredible amount of noise around every entrepreneur—AI, new technology, changing markets, economic uncertainty, global events, new opportunities appearing almost every day. We can become so busy responding to what's happening right now that we stop asking where we're actually going. You can be incredibly busy and still be moving in the wrong direction.
That's one of the reasons I created the Vision Map Blueprint. It's completely free and walks you through the first three foundational questions. First, what are you building? That's your vision. Second, why does it matter? That's your purpose—because when business gets difficult, purpose gives you a reason to keep going. Third, what are you committed to accomplishing? That's your long-term objective, something measurable that helps you know whether all this activity is actually moving you closer to where you want to be.
As I often say, clarity creates momentum. Visit TonyDUrso.com/vision to download your free Vision Map Blueprint. That's Tony D-U-R-S-O dot com slash vision. Download it, work through it, and write your answers down.
And thank you for being here. Whether you've been listening for years or this is your first episode, my goal is to bring you people who have actually done it—entrepreneurs and leaders who give you something useful to take back into your own business and life. Please follow the show, and share it with an entrepreneur who could benefit from this conversation.
Back to Terry, who was talking about building for the long haul and why succession and longevity were part of his thinking from the very beginning. Let's jump back in.

INTERVIEW – PART 6 (SUCCESSION, LONGEVITY & THE FAMILY COMPANY)
TONY: Now, at some point succession became part of the plan. Where and when did that happen?
TERRY: From day one. Longevity was always the issue. We're a family company. We were going to do everything based on the long haul. We were going to be a multigenerational company—not build it to sell to private equity. So everything was considered with longevity in mind, and we got our succession planning for ownership written down early.
The real challenge as we became more prosperous was keeping the family focused on the business first. I attended a multigenerational family business conference at Northwestern once, and the key insight was this: if you can keep the family focused on the business first, there will be plenty for everyone. But if the family starts to drift—this one needs this, that one needs that—it becomes a grab for money and the business loses focus. I've seen family companies slip away that way.
So keeping the family focused on the vision—that broad overall view of where we're going—was essential.
TONY: Now, if I was an entrepreneur listening to this interview and I asked you what advice you'd give for building a business that truly lasts, what would you say?
TERRY: You have to make a mental decision at the start: do I want to be a me-too company, or do I want to do everything better than my competition and keep getting better? It takes more energy and more focus. But if you can start at the top—best product, most efficient processing, good marketing, and closing the deals—you will be around for many generations.
People will catch up with you if you waver. But if you keep focused on those three principles, it works. And if you're not a trusted company, forget it. You won't move ahead. Trust in your people, trust in your products, and the collaboration that leads to innovation and competitive advantage—those are the foundations.
TONY: When you say trusted company, you're talking about holding to a standard that the customer can feel—even when they can't articulate why. Restaurants you trust, products you keep buying—they're holding to something. And customers are smart enough to notice when that changes.
TERRY: Exactly. If you think you can fool the customer, forget it. Customers are very smart. Make any little change and they will notice. They'll start losing trust and drifting away. Always respect that final consumer. If you ever have to make changes, let them know in advance. Treat them with respect. Keep that relationship of trust. But never try to fool a customer. You'll notice it in dwindling sales.

INTERVIEW – PART 7 (WHAT HE'D DO DIFFERENTLY: ALL-ABOUTS & FOCAL POINTS)
TONY: Given how much the world has changed, is there anything you would have done differently if you were starting today?
TERRY: Not a lot, but there is one thing I was a little slow to get started: what I call All-Abouts. It's identifying each key segment of the company—marketing, sales, cash, operations—and defining the essential focal point for each one.
Take cash. What does the finance department’s All-About look like? It's this: whatever happens, we have to have enough cash to get through the bumps, and enough cash to take advantage of opportunities when they appear. That's the focal point. Once that's defined, the question becomes simple: do we have the cash or don't we?
Same with marketing. If you're not generating leads, what are you doing? Once you have these focal points defined, communication becomes very clear. You can look at any department and ask, "Are you focused on your All-About?" Either they are or they're not.
I was a little slow to set that up, but once it was in place, it made it easy to know exactly where we were going, who was functioning, and where the gaps were. Everything dovetails together when each segment has a focal point. It's how you keep your fingers on the pulse of the business.

INTERVIEW – PART 8 (THE BIGGEST LESSON: BUILD FOR LONGEVITY, NOT FOR EXIT)
TONY: Have we covered the biggest lessons? Or is there something that stands above everything else?
TERRY: I think the biggest lesson is this: are you focused on longevity, or are you just trying to get bailed out by private equity?
A lot of companies today are built for an exit. They want to get it to a certain level and sell. I don't know how to operate like that. I was in it for the long haul from day one. And when you build for longevity, everything changes—your values, your decisions, your relationships with your team, your customers, and your family. You're not cutting corners. You're not managing for the next quarter. You're building something that will still be standing after you're gone.
You've got to be in it for the long haul, or cut corners and get it ready to sell. Those are two very different companies.
TONY: What has business taught you about life?
TERRY: Life is very similar to everything we've been talking about. Being trustworthy—with your family, your children, your friends, your neighbors. That's the biggest life lesson. It runs through everything.
I ran into it at my very first Boy Scout meeting. You take this little pledge, and the first thing it says is: a Scout is trustworthy. I had to ask my dad what that meant. He explained it to me and said, "This is with you the rest of your life." And he was right. It's just a good way to be.
TONY: And there's a book.
TERRY: Yes. After this long career, my five kids told me, "Dad, you've got to write this down." So I went through all the principles—from the preparation to buy a business, to the three foundational principles, to the core values, to the All-Abouts—and I called it Business is Simple. Now, that sounds crazy. Business isn't simple—it's quite chaotic. But the structure is simple. The three principles are simple. The core values are simple. The All-Abouts are a simple concept. And if you can keep that simplicity in mind, it's quite valuable—to your children, your grandchildren, and to anyone who wants to build something that lasts.
I hope it spills over into education one day, because they still don't teach how to compete or how to build core values in business school. They should.

INTERVIEW – PART 9 (THE INDIANA JONES OF SEAFOOD: SEVEN COUNTRIES, FORTY INSPECTORS)
TONY: I understand there's quite a story behind how you expanded globally. Can you take us back to what that was actually like on the ground?
TERRY: When our sales started taking off, I had to go to other countries to find brackish water for the crabs—and to source crab cakes and pasteurized crab meat. I ended up in what I'll call the grubby world of seafood villages. They actually called me the Indiana Jones of the Seafood Business—which felt about right. Every morning I'd wake up and there'd be chickens in the hallway. I'd pick up my luggage and find a scorpion inside. Geckos on the ceiling chattering away at night. I didn't mind. I had to find good suppliers.
The best ones were typically third-generation family operations where the founders had sent their kids to American universities. They understood quality, compliance, and long-term relationships. But a lot of others were a little on the sleazy side and we simply couldn't work with them long.
We're now operating in seven countries with great supplier partners. And one thing we did that I think made a real difference—we hired food technology graduates from each of the countries where we operate to monitor our quality in the field. We have forty of these graduates watching everything for us. Nobody else in our industry has done that. But you cannot manage seven-country operations across three different product lines from a distance. You need somebody reliable on the ground watching out for your quality and your brand every single day. That was one of the smarter things I did.


OUTRO
TONY: You have definitely built a very trustworthy empire, Terry. Absolutely amazing. Once again, this is Terry Conway. We talked about what makes companies last—and boy, did he deliver on that.
You can find Terry and his book at TerryConway-Biz.com. That's T-E-R-R-Y C-O-N-W-A-Y dash B-I-S dot com. The book is Business is Simple, and it's also available on Amazon—I'll put the link in the show notes.
Terry, I just want to thank you. This was very good advice. Heartwarming, real-world, and grounded in core values that still deliver to this day. Really appreciated having you on.
TERRY: Thank you. It's been operating in the weeds for a long time—not an ivory tower.
TONY: That's exactly why it works. Thank you so much.
When you put it all together, you begin to understand why this company has endured. Terry started with a small cottage business—one product, one telephone line, a company that needed to be reinvented. But he saw something others didn't. He improved the product. He found ways to produce it faster and more efficiently. He expanded capacity. He went out and closed the deals. And eventually he took that little regional operation into markets around the world.
But what really struck me throughout this conversation isn't just the growth. It's what he refused to compromise along the way. Trust. Thoroughness. Humility. A willingness to go wherever the opportunity led—even if that meant waking up with a scorpion in his luggage. And above all, a long-term mindset from the very first day.
Guys, if you like this, tell your friends about Terry and what he did—this long-term mindset, this multigenerational vision to build something the family and future generations can actually run. And wherever you're getting this, please follow the show. It helps to bring more amazing guests to you. All right. Let's use this and let's help you move on your journey to success. Thanks. Remember, just take action. Success awaits those who persevere and remain steadfast despite the odds. Sow good seeds, do good deeds. And I'll see you on the next episode.