(North Canton, OH – Jan. 21, 2010) –Combine quality products with quality people and you have a recipe for success, Shearer’s Foods, Inc. CEO Robert Shearer told a standing-room-only crowd Thursday at Stark State College.

Shearer spoke about the ingredients for successful business-building to kick off the College’s Homegrown Entrepreneurs series. The free community event reflected Stark State’s vision of serving as a catalyst for economic growth, and emphasized its strong relationship with business and industry partners.

It was a passion for creating better-tasting potato chips that prompted Shearer to start his family company. “If you have an idea and a passion, look for a niche,” he said. “If there’s a need, you can always fill it.” Shearer’s award-winning snacks recently celebrated 35 years in business. The Brewster-based company has grown from a one-kettle operation with four employees to a $160 million business with nearly 900 employees, and continues to expand.

Shearer detailed the “six C’s” he follows in running his company: credibility (“What you say is what you do.”), capabilities (developing people through training and programs), communication (talking, for instance, with employees about how to make their jobs, the product and the company better), compliments (recognizing achievement to create good teamwork), community (caring about the people around you) and conservation (minimizing environmental impact).

Entrepreneurship, Shearer said, can’t be taught, but should be nurtured. He outlined essential characteristics of successful leaders, including passion, self-confidence, a competitive edge, resiliency, integrity, authenticity, focus on improvement, optimism and initiative.  He hires employees, he said, who are most like the “A team” players already working in the company, like one Stark State grad already excelling at Shearer’s. “I’ll take 100 more just like him,” the CEO said.

With half of the Fortune 500 companies launched during an economic downturn, today’s environment is ripe with opportunity, Shearer said.  Despite obstacles such as patent and immigration laws or health care hurdles, entrepreneurs are the engines that drive American innovation, he said. “There are opportunities for all of you in today’s world for you to get out there and make it happen.”

“There’s tremendous reason for optimism,” said Stark State President John O’Donnell, PhD. Stark State, like Shearer’s, emphasizes people and products, O’Donnell said, producing skilled graduates ready for the workforce. “Our goal is making this county the most educated in Ohio so companies like Bob Shearer’s can be driven forward,” he said. “Thank you to people like Bob Shearer who have given economic vitality to Stark County.”

The Homegrown Entrepreneurs series is coordinated through Stark State’s Business and Entrepreneurial Studies Division.