Most kids’ first jobs involve trudging behind a lawnmower or chucking newspapers at front doors — the kind of work that exposes you to the elements. But John Walters’ first job was indoors, sheltered carefully from weather and strictly temperature-controlled. It had to be — otherwise Walters would have had a lot of dead chickens to contend with.
Growing up in Richmond, Va., the current co-COO of Hartford Life spent a few Saturdays each month collecting eggs from his father’s chicken houses.
This was no little chicken coop: In 30 years of operation, his father’s business grew from 5,000 to about 1 million chickens. Walters would spend most of his young working life in the chicken houses, which grew to be facilities as long as football fields, housing up to 50,000 chickens apiece. Indoor work, yes, but the buildings stank.
“It was a pretty aromatic place,” Walters said. The houses, with their massive ranks of clucking residents, were carefully controlled environments, designed to provide the correct temperature, lighting, food and water. Huge fans on the side of the houses turned constantly, keeping fresh air moving through. If a disease spread or a power outage disrupted the temperature inside, entire housefuls of chickens could have died off and devastated the family business.
Walters learned the ropes early on. Like most family-owned businesses, the children had to pitch in occasionally. When snow blocked the roads and prevented employees from getting in and eggs from getting out, Walters was called upon to lend a hand.
“Instead of being out sledding, I was with my father, helping him get through the day,” he said. It was Walters’ first lesson in diligence and commitment.
As Walters got older he took on a larger role, making deliveries to grocery stores and McDonald’s, or packaging the eggs during after-school shifts. With hundreds of thousands of eggs — about 800,000 per day at one point — the business was a constant operation of collection, washing, quality inspection, packaging and delivery every single day. The egg business had larger business troubles to contend with over the decades, too: Eggs were known chiefly as cholesterol-rampant villains for many years, a perception that hurt the dairy industry.
Walters worked for his father until he got a different summer job in college, selling advertising for the University of North Carolina’s yellow pages. A promotion came the next summer, and while most college kids went back to live and work in their hometowns, Walters was a traveling manager of sorts, overseeing advertising salespeople at Notre Dame, Western Michigan and other universities.
He had to travel to campuses to find college students who could sell yellow page ads — and because these students didn’t have summer housing, he had to arrange for restaurants and hotels to provide the employees with food and lodging for three months. Walters rotated around five campuses throughout the summer, managing their sales teams.
“I really enjoy the sales process, I really enjoy managing people, and you could make good money at it, so it fit for me,” he said.
Besides, he got to soak up new surroundings. When he worked at the University of Illinois he got to travel to Chicago frequently. He went to Lake Huron, saw Iowa’s summertime cornfields, exploring far more places than any home-bound job would have allowed.
The yellow page ad sales career path had its perks, but it was a brief stint rather than the beginnings of an advertising career. After college, Walters joined the annuity department at Wheat First Securities, which was owned by The Hartford. Today, he’s the co-COO of Hartford Life and president of U.S. Wealth Management.
