Background Information: Mr. McIntyre, who is now retired, has owned and operated a multitude of businesses in the past including: a pawn shop, a pool room, a newspaper, a skating rink, a flea market, a real estate development company and a radio station. In all of the businesses that Mr. McIntyre owned, he was primary technician but made a point to delegate as often as possible.
1. What one piece of advice would you give to someone who wanted to start their own business if they do not have any money?
The best piece of advice I could give someone who wants to start their own business involves pricing. Most people, who want to start a business, do so to make money. They open a craft store, etc. They do something they know how to do already and don’t really look and see if there is a demand for their product. They are just eager to start their own business in order to make money. They will often take in consideration how much the materials/inventory costs as well as the overhead and labor. They use this information to determine the price of their goods. On paper, this doesn’t sound too bad. The problem is the cost of an item is not the indicator of the price. Instead, the market determines the price of the goods because it doesn’t matter if it costs you $200 to make an item so you price it at $300 to cover your costs and make a profit. If you charge $300 for an item because it cost you $200 to make it that does not mean anyone will pay that much for the item. The market determines the price so before you decide what you are going to do, you should decide if there is a market for your product and if there is, what will be the market be willing to pay for your product. Don’t worry about how much money you are going to make but how much money you can sell it for in comparison to how much it costs you to make.
2. How do you generate new ideas and explain a successful venture that came of one of these ideas?
Overall, I just roll with the flow. The best ideas seem to come to me out of the blue at 3 am. I will wake up suddenly with some off the wall business concept and roll over to the nightstand to write the idea down to be revisited in the morning. A piece of advice for any entrepreneur would be to keep a pad and pencil handy. My ideas come to me in the middle of the night, therefore, I keep a pen and paper beside my bed.
Sometimes you fall into business ideas accidentally. When I started the real estate development company, it was a complete accident. I have always enjoyed going to auction sales, not really looking to make money, but just have always loved to go to auction sales. One week I saw an advertisement for a real estate auction where the company was auctioning off twelve hundred acres of raw land. I went and bought twenty-five acres of land for $15,000. I could not resist that bargain! I figured that over time I could make a little money if I divided the property into five to seven acre tracts. After I purchased the property, I realized that most buyers there were planning to do the same thing! I thought that I had really messed up by purchasing this property for resale! Other buyers had more money than I did and bought more property than I did. At first, I wondered how I was going to compete. I then decided to try something different. Lower income people make up a large percent of the county where the property is located. Poor people don’t have much money. If they have credit, they often don’t have enough income, to make a purchase like land. If you don’t own anything, most banks required, at the time, a 50% down payment on raw land; therefore, making a land purchase out of the question for most poor people. Let’s face it, home/land ownership is a large part of the American dream. I decided to market this property to low income purchasers. Since there are limited ways that property can be destroyed and you can’t steal it, I decided to not follow traditional financing practices. Instead, I asked for a negotiable $500 down payment and, within reason, allowed customers to choose their own payment amount and the date they wanted to make their payment. I also did not do credit checks. The tradeoff was, that with such easy financing terms, I could make the sales price a little higher than if I was selling the property to people who would go get bank loans. I created an attractive advertisement that I placed in the local newspaper hoping for ten or so calls thinking this is about how many times I would need to show the property to sell two of the tracts. Was I surprised! I received over two hundred calls in twenty-four hours! Needless to say, the property was sold within a week!
3. In reference to self – employment, what was your greatest fear and how did you manage it?
I did not/do not fear anything when it comes to business. If you go in with fears, these fears will stop you from going after your dreams! The biggest piece of advice I could give to a budding entrepreneur would be to not worry about the good side of an idea. I always looked at what could possibly go wrong and come up with a way to counteract it. If you make this a habit, you will have nothing to fear.
4. How do you define success?
Almost everybody equates success to making money but I do not define making plenty of money as success. I don’t think I am the only one either. Most people define “making plenty of money” as never having to worry about money again. If this were the true definition, you wouldn’t have Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, etc because long ago, they made enough money to never worry about money again and they are both still making more money. If money were the definition of success, there would be no truly rich people in America. To them the success is not the money but instead, the way you make money is the success. To them, and to me, it is the chase of making the money that defines success not the money itself.
5. If you could talk to one successful person from history, who would it be and why?
JP Morgan, or John D Rockefeller. Both men were absolutely ruthless. They were the original “Walmarts”. They would move into a location, especially Rockefeller. Once he moved into a location, he would undercut his competition, take a loss on everything he sold then jack up the prices when there was no competition left. I would do my best to pick his mind and ask him for ideas on how he came up with this concept to start with. I admire what they did but as far as making money, these guys were ruthless. They were the “Walmarts” of 100 years ago.
6. What is your favorite aspect of being an entrepreneur?
The challenge
7. What is one of the biggest entrepreneurial mistakes you have made?
Without a doubt, the biggest mistake I have ever made involves a newspaper that I co-owned. I am a stubborn man but the newspaper was an example of me being the most stubborn that I have ever been in my life. My biggest weakness in business is my ability or inability to hire competent people. It seems no matter how hard I try, I just can’t do it. If there is a con-artist within a hundred miles, I will hire them! I have known this about myself for a long time but it came to a head a few years ago. Unlike my other ventures, the newspaper required a lot of employees. We started with a dozen or so and went from there. Most of these employees were sales people that were originally supposed to only be paid on commission. I felt bad for them because this newspaper was a start up and I knew it would be more difficult for them to get sales for us than at another newspaper so I gave them a salary. BAD IDEA!! They literally stopped producing and because I felt bad for them, I let them continue working. We had some sales representatives who even placed bogus ads to make it look like they were working. I learned my lesson and one thing I can say for sure….I will never own another business where you have to have employees.
8. Excluding yours, what business past or present do you admire most and why?
Iron Horse Auction Co, Rockingham, NC, because the two men who run the corporation have an inner drive to succeed, the desire to make money and whenever any problem comes up, they have the ability to think through it and solve the problem. The owners are very innovative and are always looking for ways to tweak their business and make it better. Often, people who make plenty of money become complacent. A good example would be Sears and Roebuck. Their board of directors screwed up. At one time it was the largest, most successful store in the world. They became complacent. They let their quality go down and now, they are not a big player anymore
