About Me

Kathy was impressed that I had a college education; it meant a lot more back then than it does now. But she was a not that impressed, baffled might be a better word, when I couldn't tell her what kind of job that I wanted when we got back to the U.S. That was because I still didn't want one. I wanted to be my own boss (but had no idea how to make that a reality).

After my three year enlistment was up, I took my wife and child back to my hometown. The economy was still very bad, and neither of us could get work, so after our unemployment compensation was exhausted, we both went to school on the GI Bill. That paid pretty good, but it meant that I was just getting more education to do what I didn't want to do - work for someone else. With savings and the GI Bill, we were living well, but I got restless. I went down to my local Army recruiter and joined the Army again. I spent my next term of enlistment at Ft Sill, Oklahoma.

I enjoyed Oklahoma, but the military stateside was too much like working for an employer. Germany had been more fun than work. To compensate for being so far from family and home, the "higher ups" over there gave out three and four day passes pretty regularly. With our 30 days of "leave" and most weekends off, we spent more time playing than anything else. Weekends in Munich or Paris. A week or longer in Spain or Italy. Oklahoma just couldn't measure up. And when I heard a hint that my next assignment might be a year in Korea and I couldn't take my family ... Alabama here I come.

I was happy to be back in Alabama, but I had used up all my "fun tickets" last time that I was there. I had to make some money. I was able to get back on unemployment compensation, and Kathy worked a series of part-time jobs (which paid less than my unemployment). That was a short-term solution to a long-term problem. So I began looking for a business opportunity.

I looked at dozens of businesses - everything from a Baskin-Robbins franchise to a convenience store, finally settling on Kwik-Kopy, a quick printing franchised operation. Since I had no money or credit record, I proposed to my father that we form a partnership - I would furnish the labor and he would furnish the start-up money. (In retrospect, I learned some important lessons from this business. The first one was as time moves on, the time-frame for taking profits from a business, assuming that it is successful, gets shorter and shorter. Changing technology can make "cutting edge" quaint very quickly and sometimes without notice. Those who planned to retire and fund college for their children from their quick print shops found that out).

Though it was only a modest success, I was thankful for the regular paycheck that our quick printing franchise provided. After three years in the printing business, I was restless and exhausted at the same time. Though the hours were good, pretty close to a 40 hour work week, the days at work were intense and stressful.

The majority of our business was "small business," most of it for family businesses and entrepreneurs. I didn't realize that I was learning another lesson from this business, but I was: Even if you are paying your bills in the business and at home, never be complacent. Keep your eyes and ears open for an opportunity that might make what you are now doing insignificant in comparison. Since I was taking care of the printing needs for a large part of the local small business community, I could tell by the printing orders who the failures, the merely successful and the "making so much money it was ridiculous" were. Heating and cooling was lucrative. Pizza joints were making money. By 1983, video stores were making some serious money, compared to investment, and the owners appeared to be having fun.

I spent my free time learning all I could about this fledgling industry. By 1983, there were several video rental franchisers. I sent for their franchise information and listened to their sales pitches. I studied what they were doing and determined that this was a business that didn't need a franchise to be successful. In fact, it was such a new industry that by reading their advertising and visiting a few stores, I could quickly learn everything they knew - and there was no advantage at the time to any name on a sign.

Since I was too busy running the print shop, I suggested to my brother than he should consider the video rental business. Since he had been laid off from his steel industry job for about a year, it didn't take a lot of convincing. He and my father opened a small store, the first Video Xpress, and it was an immediate success. My sister soon opened one. In 1985, I was able to turn the printing business over to a manager and open my first video store.

Less than three years later we were all so busy that we could make the printing business an "in house" shop. We kept the printing presses running for more hours in a day than we had for all of our prior printing customers combined.

In November 1994, we sold our chain of 53 video stores to a public company. When the money was divided, we all had more than most people make in a lifetime of work, and I was only 42. Other than running a bubblegum vending route that took up a couple hours a week, we just lived off of our investments that first year. Then we sold our home and moved to the Gulf of Mexico.

It wasn't as easy from there as it might sound though. My wife and I lost two-thirds of our investments in the dot-com bubble, got a good bit of it back and lost half of it again in the last market crash. The entrepreneurial spirit pushed us to open a lady's weight loss center and two dollar stores. We invested in coastal properties, sometimes living in them for a few years before renting or selling.

I was an early eBay user and for a period of several years made a large portion of our pocket money as an eBay seller. My specialty was collectibles. I have always been a collector, and I had operated a collectibles shop during the time that I was in the video business.

After eleven years on the coast we moved back home. I graduated from eBay to building Squidoo lenses and blogs. In December 2008, I built my homepage on my first static website, Gulf Shores Travel Guide. About Money Making is my fifth static website. The other four are making money, and I'm having fun with them. I expect this one to be a money-maker also. Visit this page if you want to read more about my websites.


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