OFF the CUFF

  • The Man Who Makes the World Shake

    By CNBC | Off the Cuff – Sun, Feb 24, 2013 4:00 AM EST

    For Bill Killgallon, life isn’t black or white. It’s all about navigating the grey area.

    Killgallon is chairman of The Ohio Art Company, the toy maker behind Etch A Sketch. Since its invention in the last 1950s, the iconic doodling toy has captivated children and adults worldwide. Some 150 million of the toys have been sold.

    What’s its enduring appeal? “It's just magic. ‘How the devil does this thing work?’ That was my reaction when I was in college, when my father showed me the product for the first time,“ Killgallon told Off The Cuff.

    Creating Etch A Sketch

    Etch A Sketch was the outcome of a happy accident. In 1957, Andre Cassagnes, a French electrical technician, was installing a light-switch plate at the factory where he worked. The factory made decorative wall coverings – some of them coated with metallic powders. When he peeled the decal off the brand new plate, static cling attracted metal particles to it. Cassagnes noticed that when he wrote on one side of the decal, his pencil marks were visible on the other side. As if by magic, the pencil had raked visible lines through the particles of powder that were on the reverse side.

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  • CEO Brian France on What’s Next for NASCAR

    By CNBC | Off the Cuff – Fri, Feb 22, 2013 4:01 AM EST

    For Brian France, Chairman and CEO of NASCAR, hurtling down a racetrack at 200MPH - in a souped-up stock car - is the mainstay of the family business. Ironically, he told Off The Cuff, “I enjoy watching more than I enjoy driving. You saw me parallel park - you'd understand why.”

    France is the grandson of NASCAR founder and race car driver William “Big Bill” France Sr. “I get asked all the time ‘didn't you ever want to be a race car driver? And I knew pretty early on that I was going to be on the other side of that equation,” he said.

    When he was very young he wanted to be “a cowboy, wrestling steers in the West,” or James Bond. Later, “I didn’t look at our business as a big opportunity for a career. I went to a couple of events with my dad for sure, and I grew up in Daytona where the races ran twice a year. But I never thought – even into my twenties -- that this was going to be a big enough career for me. Then the sport started to grow up. I was able to make a contribution, and it just evolved.”

    He joined the family business at the age of twenty-two, when his father, Bill France Jr. was the chairman. It was Bill, Jr. who grew NASCAR into the phenomenon it is today. As for working with his dad….Brian let out a sharp whistle. “My dad was a tough man. I think that would be putting it mildly. Short on praise, short on communications. Long on leading by example. Lots of integrity, and lots of passion for things. But he was a tough guy.”

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  • They Laughed at Me and Now I’m a CEO

    By CNBC | Off the Cuff – Tue, Feb 19, 2013 4:00 AM EST

    “I remember my first time going to a business meeting from Virginia to New York, and I remember I thought I looked okay. And what did I know? I was a country boy from Virginia,” G.J. Hart, CEO of California Pizza Kitchen told Off The Cuff,” and they actually made fun of me. I walked away from that saying, "If there's ever a chance that I can prove them wrong, no one will ever make fun of my clothes again. Other than, maybe, it's my unique style."

    That Charles Atlas moment came in 1980, when he was 22. Hart and his family had emigrated from the Netherlands to the U.S. when he was five years old. They settled in New Jersey, then Staunton, Virginia, where his father was a police officer. The young Hart had to learn English, and at first, he has said, he struggled to fit in.

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  • Paul Krugman: I Almost Enjoy Hate Mail

    By CNBC | Off the Cuff – Wed, Feb 13, 2013 4:00 AM EST

    “Boy, do I get hate mail,” Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman told "Off The Cuff." “There’s a lot of people who really, really hate what I say. I get a lot of stuff calling me a communist, a liar, and actually, various misspellings.”

    And that’s just the family-friendly version.

    Krugman is a professor of Economics and International Affairs at Princeton University. He’s the author or co-author of seven books, but it’s his work as an op-ed columnist for the New York Times that draws the ire of his correspondents. He’s been criticized Left, and Right. To some, he’s a liberal polemicist and East Coast elitist; to others, he's a doomsayer who’s been overly critical of the Obama administration.

    “It's shocking when you first encounter it. It’s ‘Oh my God, they hate me,’” he said. "I think that most people doing journalistic commentary stuff, they encounter that first wave of hate and they back down. I've been through that to the other side, where I actually almost enjoy it.”

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About Off the Cuff

Ever wondered what your boss eats for breakfast? Or why he or she works 24/7? Off the Cuff takes you outside the boardroom to show you what high-impact leaders do off the clock. Every week, corporate tycoons will answer questions about what they like (and loathe), what makes them get up in the morning, what inspires them, and what makes them the most proud.

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