Growing Rich - Arabictrader.com

GROWING RICH WITH GROWTH STOCKS
that if they moved down here and she wasn’t happy, it wouldn’t be
long before they’d want to leave,” Papp says. “I decided to do what
a lot of people warned me against. I hired Rose as well as Harry. I
figured they were either going to make it together, or not at all. I
asked her to become a CFA too. It turned out to be both brilliant and
inspired, because she has taken to stock research with a real love and
vengeance and is really good at it. She’s been my research director
since day one.”
Rose has worked her way up to becoming Papp’s equal in the stockpicking
department. “During our first year together, I made all of the
final judgments,” he notes. “After two or three years, we made the
decisions together, with my desires getting about 80 percent of the
weighting. After she had been here for about eight years, we moved
toward the two of us having a unanimous decision. That meant one
would have to cave in to the other’s desires. Now we honestly have
an equal say in what we buy, and we really do agree most of the
time.”
Harry is in charge of overseeing all client accounts. “When he came
down here, he got me to become more systematized and to do things
in an orderly fashion,” Papp says. “I was working with about 28 clients
and could run the business out of my coat pocket. It was real easy. I
had been doing this all my life. Harry made me get a routine. Of
course, as the firm grew, that was a blessing. Coming from a big
company, he understood the way things had to be done. I had never
worked for a big company, other than as a director.”
ALL IN THE FAMILY
The business has turned into a real family affair. Papp’s daughter,
Tori, also works for the company in account management and marketing.
He made her get an MBA and CFA as well before hiring her.
She’s highly allergic to the carpet glue in Papp’s building and is forced
to work with clients from home or in restaurants. “If you ever see
pictures of our family together, they are always taken in our apartment,”
Papp says. “We can’t even bring her into this building.”
Today, L. Roy Papp Investment Counsel has ten partners and
manages some $1.2 billion in assets. The “L” in his name stands for
Lessel, which goes way back in the Papp family. “Nobody’s ever heard
of it so I dropped it,” he says. “I never used it except on government
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