HOW ROBERT CARR TURNED $1 Million INTO A $4.3 Billion SUCCESS STORY with Honesty, Perseverance, and a Brilliant Sales Strategy


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n December 15, 2015, a press release came across the news wires announcing a $4.3 billion deal. It was the acquisition of Heart- land Payment Systems by Global Payments. At a glance, the deal appeared no different from the countless other large acquisition


deals that have come across the wires – a cash-and-stock transaction for $100 a share that would combine two of the world’s largest card processing companies. However, for Heartland founder and CEO Robert O. Carr, the deal meant far more: it was the culmination of four decades of doggedly fighting back from failures and a testament to the power of honesty and transparency in business. It was also confirmation that his approach to selling, which defied the advice of countless consultants and went against many industry standard practices, was a winning formula.


Highs and Lows To fully appreciate the height on which Carr stood last December, you first have to grasp the depth of his many lows. This is a man whose financial life had been marked by more peaks and valleys than the Himalayas. In his new autobiography, Through the Fires (GSBF Media, 2016), Carr takes readers along on his turbulent journey. In summary, it looks like this (you might want to buckle up here): Graduating from college with degrees in math and computer science, he landed two lucrative jobs, which he later gave up to start his own consulting com- pany. The company struggled. His wife left. One day in 1976, he walked out of his apartment to find his car being repossessed. A few years later, he was served an eviction notice for past-due mortgage payments. Through all these setbacks, Carr persevered and his con- sulting business eventually gained traction. As he climbed toward success again, he was recruited to run a payment processing company – only to learn upon arriving that it was deeply in debt. He left to start a new company, Credit Card Software Systems (CCSS), with two partners who subsequently walked out – convinced the company was going nowhere. Once again, through hard work, Carr built CCSS into a stable business and, just as it was starting to grow, it was hit with a fraud that cost it $110,000 – money Carr didn’t have.


With the help of a friend who agreed to work in sales for a year without salary so Carr could pay the fraud charges, CCSS recovered and began doing well enough to pay Carr a livable salary. And that’s when the two former partners showed up on his doorstep and pointed out a clause that gave one of them control of the company in the event of a break-up. They took over the company and Carr was back on the street.


The Wisdom of Presidents


How do you keep getting up when life keeps knocking you down? For Carr, an amateur student of the U.S. presidents, the answer is summed up in a quote by Calvin Coolidge: “Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Tal- ent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated der- elicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.” Knocked down again, Carr started another business that got the attention of Larry Schiffer, chairman of the board of Heartland Bank. Carr and Schiffer met in November 1996. Ten days after the meeting, Schiffer gave Carr a $100,000 loan to establish Heartland Payment Systems, a company that pro- cesses credit card transactions for a variety of businesses. It was the first income Carr had seen in more than six months. Heartland was an immediate success. “We grew so rap- idly that we could scarcely keep pace with demand,” Carr writes in Through the Fires. “By the end of March 1998, we were processing 1,000 new customer contracts a month.” In 2001, they sold about 50 percent of the company for $40 million.” At age 56, Carr, the “overnight” success, was rich.


Crisis Response


Anyone following the news announcement about Heart- land’s acquisition back in December 2015 might have paused to wonder how a company that was less than 20 years old had come to be worth $4.3 billion. While there are countless decisions that led to its success, two fac- tors stand out as being defining elements of Heartland: its sales approach and its ground-breaking response to a 2009 crisis. Both of these saw Carr taking a stand against popular opinion and accepted practices to do what he thought was right. And both have redefined how compa- nies approach sales and crisis management.


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