Lessons from a man who started 28 businesses (most of them successful!)

Courtland L. Logue is from Austin, Texas, and he has a compulsion. He loves to start new companies. By age 47, he has started 28 companies. All that experience has taught him three fundamental principles of business success....

Some of the businesses he's started were a sign business, an air conditioner factory, a dry-wall supplier, travel agencies, bike stores, pawnshops, and software companies, to name some of them.

According to Logue, five of his ventures were complete failures. One of them -- EZ Pawn shops -- is a huge success. The remaining 22 businesses were "pretty successful," meaning they were profitable when he sold them, often a year or two after starting them. "I get bored real quick," Logue says.

He chose many of his businesses by leafing through the Yellow Pages looking for solid businesses that could benefit from splashier ads.

(Does this remind you of what Michael Ross has said in the past, about finding good business ideas from the Yellow Pages?)

His biggest success was EZ, an chain of upscale pawn shops, which made it to Fortune Magazine's list of America's Fastest-Growing Companies in 1995.

He started in the early 1970s, and by the mid-1980s was running 12 companies simultaneously.

Why does he do this?

"I like living at 100 miles an hour," Logue says. "That's where life is most fun -- out on the edge."

What has he learned from all this experience? It boils down to three essential things....

1. First, get good people. Logue says, "Remember, .200 hitters don't win championships. Overpay and get .300 hitters. Just don't hire more of them than you need. With partners, make sure you get along and you both know which one of you is the boss."

2. Second, stick to what you know. For Courtland (known to his friends as "Corky"), that meant mainly retail-type businesses. When he dabbled in manufacturing, he got into trouble....

(I've read this advice several times from those who have started multiple businesses. Often, they stick to the area they are familiar with and know about for all their businesses, which increases their chances of success.)

This is shown best by when Logue focused on a businesses he thought he understood well -- pawnshops. He founded EZ in 1974. His game plan was to change the face of pawnshops.

"People view pawnshops like the sewer, a place you wouldn't want to go," he says. "But I made EZ Pawn clean and bright with colorful blue awnings so people would feel comfortable going there." By 1995, EZ had over 250 shops, with more than $160 million in revenue.

3. Then there's tenet number three -- watch the business like a hawk.

Logue says, "I go over numbers every day from 4 to 6 pm. I know entrepreneurs who say they'll look at the numbers at the end of the year. Never wait till the end of the year, or you'll learn about trouble too late to act."

More recently, in 1999 Courtland Logue has partnered with a former finance executive at Dell Computer, to expand his Antiqueland chain of antique stores from 7 stores to 100 stores. He still hasn't slowed down!

I enjoy learning from lessons these "multiple-business entrepreneurs".... I admire them.... Online, we have many successful multiple-entrepreneurs too, people like Gordon Alexander, Don Alm, Michael Ross, Jim Straw, and others too....

These people have really learned the hard lessons through experience, and I believe most of them start different businesses because they LOVE it!

- Dien Rice

References:
Fortune, "Serial Entrepreneur: Tips from a man who started 28 businesses," July 10, 1995.
Austin Business Journal, "EZ antiques," June 18, 1999.


EZ Pawn shops