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Friends and neighbors, even strangers Perfect ran into on the streets of Lawrenceburg, told him, "If you build it, we will come."

"The Cherokee ski area, near Knoxville, Tenn., went belly up," Perfect recalls. "So we took every grain truck and trailer we could get our hands on and drove down there. We bought everything at auction, from ski equipment to cash registers to kitchen utensils."

When the worn-out artificial turf was removed from Cincinnati's Riverfront Stadium, the Perfects were there, too, trucks at the ready, to haul the carpeting back to Clyde Perfect's ski lodge, which today encompasses 40,000 square feet.

They got lockers from a bus terminal for little more than a song.

But long lines of cars snaking their way through the cornfields as in Field of Dreams? Well, it just didn't happen.

In fact, if Perfect North Slopes had not been a family business, it probably would have closed long ago. In the early years, charts of the company's profit and loss resembled a profile of the mountain itself, with almost all the arrows pointing downhill.

From October through March, only 10,000 skiers went through the turnstiles during the 1979-80 season.

"We paid the electric bill and serviced our debt," Perfect says, "but that was about it. Pulling the plug on the whole operation was always in the back of our minds. Starting the business was a stressful time for all of us. This was our family, our business, our land and our farm. We had a lot on the line. But we were driven and stubborn enough that we were going to make it work, no matter what it would take."

'We've just worked our tails off'

What it would take was plenty of nose-to-the-grindstone work.

"Plain old hard work - that's really the key ingredient to being a successful entrepreneur," Perfect explains. "You have to love what you are doing and be willing to work. There's no question, we've just worked our tails off to make this thing work."

Perfect North Slopes now handles 10,000 customers on a good day, pulling in upwards of 250,000 customers a season.

And from the comfy perspective provided by a business that just celebrated its 25-year anniversary, Perfect can see that it was a good thing people were slow in warming to his vision of a ski resort in southern Indiana.

"If we had the crowds in the beginning that people told us to expect, I doubt we would have been able to handle it," he says. "We had to learn as we went along, and we had our share of growing pains. We learned how to be efficient in our operation and how to cut corners to make things work."

Perfect has grown the company by challenging himself and his employees to not fall into the "business as usual" rut.

"I love the saying 'If you always do what you have always done, you will always get what you have always got.' That could not be more true than in business," he says.

The Perfect family (his wife, Ellen, is the marketing director and all three kids, Alex, 18, Paige, 14, and Grace, 10, help out) steadily grew the business by cultivating relationships with customers who come back year after year. Along the way, Perfect has cultivated his own business philosophy.

"I tend to stay away from people who justify bad behavior by saying 'It's just business,'" Perfect says. "Business is largely relationships, and good people tend to do good business."

Growth is no joke

So during the summer, the Perfects can be found adding a tube run or a ski lift, or paving additional parking spaces. The Perfects have 100 acres in ski area and another 50 acres in parking lots, buildings and ponds that are used to pump man-made snow onto the slopes. Their family of employees has grown to 35 full-time and over 1,000 during the season.

But Perfect won't grow the business without good reason.

"I always try to make sure things we do pass what I call the 'bigger truck test,'" he says.

"That's based on the old joke about two good old boys who bought a truck, came to Indiana and bought hay for $1 a bale, then drove back home to sell it for $1 a bale. When one made the observation that they weren't making money, the other said, 'I told you we should have bought a bigger truck.'

"We try and make sure we are not making changes that only amount to a bigger truck."

While you may not find any "bigger trucks" at Perfect North Slopes, you will find plenty of skiers. Perfect says the business finally turned the financial corner about five years ago. The Perfects built it, and now, finally, the skiers have come.

It certainly isn't Heaven and it isn't Iowa, but it is Perfect.

Contact Perfect at cperfect@perfectnorth.com