Growing up in eastern Turkey, I was not really involved with the family business - sheep and cow farming, yogurt and cheese making. But I think I learned from my father the unspoken business language or instincts that go back thousands of years.

I brought in a yogurt master from Turkey. I went to Greece. I was always going back and forth, from New York to Turkey and Greece. The recipe we use has been around hundreds and hundreds of years. Growing up in Turkey, not a day would go by that we wouldn't eat yogurt like this.

A manufacturing resurgence is what will give local communities and small towns across America a fighting chance for survival. Many of today's American entrepreneurs come from those very places but make their wealth elsewhere. We need to change that.

We took a plant that was being closed by a big company thinking there was no good use for it, and we came in with a different perspective. We bought some used equipment, as simple as we could.