Interview with the Young Founder and CEO of Four Corporations
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Note: Reader discretion is advised. Some mild swearing is quoted.
This is the inspirational true story of a poor boy with brains, guts, and big dreams who became the president of four corporations that he founded—all by the age of 26.
Studs Terkel interviewed this young man, Ken Brown, for his book Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do (1974).
From Brown’s own words, you will learn that good ideas plus hard work still equals a successful business in this great land of opportunity. He also discusses some of the unique challenges that youth poses for aspiring entrepreneurs.
THE YOUNG ENTREPRENEUR EXECUTIVE
Brown worked since he was a child. “I started working pretty young. When I was six, I had my first paper route. At nine, I worked in a bicycle repair shop. At the same time, I was delivering chop suey for a Chinese restaurant. I worked as a stock boy in a grocery store for a year. This had no interest to me whatsoever. This was all after school and weekends. I always liked the feeling of being independent. I never asked my parents for financial help. Anything I wanted to buy, I always had the money. I didn’t have them watching over me. They wouldn’t have cared had they known.”
He did exceptionally well in school. “I was lucky in school. Subjects everybody had trouble with—mathematics, algebra—they just came natural to me. I never did any studying. I was more interested in my work than school. I liked drafting and machine shop. History and English bored me. [¶] I won a scholarship to Francis Parker [an upper-middle class private elementary and high school]. My mother wanted me to go there. They said, ‘Nobody will ever know you’re on scholarship.’ I don’t think anybody there DIDN’T know I was there that way. I never got invited to any of the parties. They just put up with you because you were there. Got in a lot of fights. Ended up paying for a window. After two years, I quit and went to Lane Tech [a public high school mostly attended by lower-middle class boys] where I really wanted to go.”
He took a few classes at the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) while still in high school, then dropped out of school altogether at age sixteen to begin working full time. “I had my first full-time job as a tractor mechanic for International Harvester. They had an opening for an industrial designer. I studied that at IIT. I was to start at eighty-five hundred dollars a year, plus they were gonna pay for my education. I was supposed to start Monday at eight. They called me about six thirty in the morning and said they’ve got a guy with a college degree and ten years’ experience. I said, ‘You need tractor mechanics, I’ll take that job.’ I bullshitted my way into it. They gave me a test which was ridiculous. Instead of making eighty-five hundred as an industrial designer, I was making ten five to start as a tractor mechanic. (Laughs.)
“I worked there for about a year. I was getting maybe a couple of hours’ sleep. I was putting in a bout a twenty-hour day. I was just rundown completely. I was in the hospital for three months. Had a relapse, was back in for another month. This is when I did a lot of thinking. I decided to go into business for myself. I rented a place for forty-five dollars a month and I opened up a repair shop for motorcycles, lawn mowers, and bicycles. That was nine years ago. I was about seventeen. [¶] This drive I had—maybe it went back to Francis Parker. Seeing those kids drive up in chauffeur-driven cars—what I thought were the finer things. I wanted to make something of myself. I felt if I worked hard while I was young, I could take it easier later on. If I’d come from a wealthy family, I probably never would have had this drive. The other kids were laying around at the beach and screwing around. Here I was already in business. I felt I really accomplished something. [¶] My interest in motorcycles was for the money originally. I saw this was going to be a big field. Later, business becomes a game. Money is the kind of way you keep score. How else you gonna see yourself go up? If you’re successful in business, it means you’re making money. It gets to the point where you’ve done all the things you want to do. There’s nothing else you want to buy any more. You get your thrill out of seeing the business grow. Just building it bigger and bigger …”
He talks about the fruits of his labor: “When I started making money, I just went crazy. I bought a limousine and had a chauffeur. I bought two Cadillacs and a Corvette. Bought a condominium in Skokie. I just bought a home out in Evanston. I’m building a ranch out in Arizona. Once you get somethin’, it’s not as important as it was. You need something else to keep going. I could never retire. It gets inside you. If you don’t progress every day, you feel you’ve wasted it. That’s a day you’ll never get back.”
He talks about competition and jealousy: “You get enemies in the business, especially if you’re successful. Ones that have grown up and started with you. You want to be liked and you want to help people. I’ve found out you can’t. It’s not appreciated. They never thank you. If you’re successful in business, you’re around phonies all the time. There’s always some guy slappin’ you on the back, tryin’ to get you to buy something from him or lend him money. [¶] You remember old friends and good times. This relationship is gone. The fun you used to have. They’re envious of what you have. They wonder why they didn’t do it. When I opened the repair shop in Old Town, I was paying my partner $250 a week. I gave him a car and helped him with his tuition in college. Someone offered him double what I paid. I said, ‘If you go, there’s no comin’ back.’ So he left. We grew up together, went to grammar school. I lived with him. There’s no loyalty when it comes to money. [¶] I’m younger than most of the guys who work for me, but I feel older. It’s like a big family. I have the feeling they’re not here for the money. They want to help me out. They respect me. They feel that what I’m doing is, in the end, gonna work out for them. I don’t like an employee that comes in and it’s a cut and dried deal: ‘I want so much a week,’ and walks out at five o’clock.”
He works very hard. “I usually get out of here at one o’clock in the morning. I go home and eat dinner at two. I do my best thinking at night. I can’t fall asleep until seven in the morning. I turn the TV on. I don’t even pay attention to it. They got the all-night movies. You actually feel like an idiot. I just sit there in the living room, making notes, trying to put down things for the next day to remember. I plan ahead for a month. Maybe I’ll lay down in bed about four in the morning. If something comes in my head, I’ll get up and start writing it. If I get three, four hours sleep, I’m okay. [¶] That’s when I come up with my ideas. That’s when I put this Electrocycle idea together. I sold Sun Electric on the idea of building them for me. Then I sold Evel Knievel on the idea of putting his name on it. He’s on nation-wide TV. [¶] Knievel is a good example of doing something for fame and money. He takes all the beatings and breaks himself like he does because he feels it’s that important to be famous and make money. When you really enjoy something, it doesn’t seem like work.”
His four corporations are: (1) American Motorcycle Mechanics School; (2) Evel Kneivel’s Electrocycle Service Centers; (3) Triple-A Motorcycle Leasing; and (4) AMS Productions.
American Motorcycles Mechanics School was the largest motorcycles’ mechanics school in the country at the time. “I started out before they had any. It’s a 350-hour course, twelve weeks, six hours a day. It’s three hours on the night shift, twenty-four weeks. Now, we’re having home study courses. We’re doing new courses on the Wankel rotary engine. They’re gonna go big in the next five years. Most of your cars are gonna have ‘em. They don’t pollute.”
Evel Kneivel’s Electrocycle Service Centers is a franchise of “service centers and accessory sales. The machine I designed for Sun Electric tests motorcycles and electronically spots the problem. I’m partners with Evel Knievel. We’re going nation-wide. We expect to have them in every city. I’ve got fifteen salesmen around the country selling franchises. You walk in, get your motorcycle tuned up, and buy accessories. We sell ‘em the initial package, we set ‘em up, we have our own design for the buildings and everything. It’s going to be like McDonald’s or Kentucky Fried Chicken.”
Triple-A Motorcycle Leasing is another franchise. “You can lease a motorcycle just like you can an automobile for a season, a month, a day. We’re going nation-wide here also.”
AMS Productions is for shows where Evel Knievel performs. “We have three salesmen selling program ads and booth space. This year we’re doing ten shows. At show time, you need about fifty people.”
He always has his eyes on the future. “In the next few years, there’s gonna be a lot of big things going on. It’s just going to skyrocket. In the last year, I had plenty of ups and downs. When you’re down, you’ve gotta keep climbin’ six times as hard. [¶] I’m enjoying what I’m doing. I’ll make a good chunk of money in one thing, stick it back in the other thing, and just watch it grow. I’d get more out of it than hoarding it away somewhere. I’d say I’m better off than most twenty-six-year-old guys. (Laughs.)
“Any one of these companies would probably be twice as big if I put all my times into it. But, it wouldn’t be a challenge any more. There are some new ideas I’m working on that are really something. I don’t even know whether I should say anything …”
He talks about some secrets to his success: “Everybody in the world could do something if they wanted to. I guess there’s some people that don’t want to do anything. If they could, they wouldn’t be fighting with each other. [¶] The world is full of people who don’t have the guts or the balls to go out on their own. People want to be in business for themselves, but they don’t want to take the chance. That’s what separates me from the majority of people. If I’ve got an idea, I’ll go ahead and put everything on the line. [¶] A lot of young people are getting into business now. The shops and bars and places where young people go. Who knows better than a young person what’s gonna attract young people? Companies are beginning to realize this. [¶] The hardest problem I had was mechanics. If I hired an older guy, a good mechanic, I couldn’t tell him what to do. He might have been doing it for twenty years, and he didn’t want to hear from a kid like me. But, if I took a young kid who knew nothing but had ambition, I could make a better man for me out of him. This is what the bigger companies are finding out. [¶] What motivates a lot of young people who work here is they see somebody like me who made it. They think, Christ! What the hell’s wrong with me? When the article came out about me in the paper [Chicago Daily News did a full-page story on him in the financial section], Jesus! I had so many calls from young people: ‘This is great! I’m gonna get my ass going.’ I had a call from a sixteen-year-old kid. He felt he really wanted to do things. I was amazed at the number of young people who read it. [¶] A guy I went to grammar school with—hadn’t seen him since sixth grade—was out in the hall here. His brother had cancer. He was telling me how happy they both were to read something like this. It gave ‘em a boost. They had known somebody that had made a success.”
Although he is only 26 years old, he is bothered by most “young people’s” attitudes: “This hippie deal and flower child, I don’t believe in giving anybody anything. I think everybody should work. The world problem that bothers me more than anything is the attitude of younger people. The opportunities they have, and no desire. I hate to see anybody that feels the world owes them a living. All this welfare. The largest percentage of them don’t want to do anything.”
He talks about his weekends: “I’m down at the office Saturdays, too. Sundays, about half the time. The other half of the time, maybe my wife and I will go horseback riding or visit a friend’s house. Even when you’re visiting with them, you can’t get away from your work. They ask about it. It’s kind of a good feeling. There’s not too many Sundays like that. I’ve been traveling more than ever with these franchises.”
He recalls the special challenges his youth brought to his ventures: “When I was younger—I was applying for a Yamaha franchise or a Honda—these dealer reps would come in and ask for Ken Brown. I’d say, ‘I’m Ken Brown.’ They’d say, ‘I want to talk to your father.’ I fought to get in Old Town. The Chamber of Commerce didn’t want me there. They still had this black leather jacket image [of motorcyclists]. They felt all these Hell’s Angels would be coming down and wrecking. We opened up and had three hundred thousand people there on a weekend. You didn’t even have to advertise. I had the place full. They saw money being made there. A young punk comes in and rents an alley for $125 a month, and I made about $125,000 over the summer out of that alley—leasing bikes. That really killed ‘em. [¶] When you’re young and in business, it’s not an asset. The first time I walked into a bank, they didn’t want to deal with me. I used to be nervous. I’d look at the guy across the desk with a tie and suit and everything. You could see what he was thinking. You oughta see that guy now when I come in. (Laughs.) When I go into banks now, I feel I’m better than them. And they know it.
“You’ve been noticing my Mickey Mouse watch? (Laughs.) I like something like this because nobody would expect me to be wearing this. No matter what I’ve done, it’s always been they never expected it. When I wanted to rent the Amphitheatre for the first show, they turned me down. The next year, they were happy to deal with me. [¶] It bothers them that somebody new should come in and be so successful. It wasn’t easy. When other people were going out and just having fun and riding motorcycles and getting drunk and partying, I was working. I gave up a lot. I gave up my whole youth, really. That’s something you never get back.”
Was it all worth it? “People say to me, ‘Gee! You work so damn hard. How can you ever enjoy it?’ I’m enjoying it every day. I don’t have to get away for a weekend to enjoy it. Eventually, I’ll move out to Arizona and make that my headquarters. I’m young enough. I’ll only be thirty-one in five years. I can still do these things—horseback riding, looking after animals. I like animals. But, I’ll never retire. I’ll take it a little bit easier. I’ll have to. I had an ulcer since I was eighteen. [¶] I chew up a lot of Mylantas. It’s for your stomach, to coat it. Like Maalox. I probably go through twenty tablets a day. [¶] I guess people get different thrills out of business in different ways. There’s a lot of satisfaction in showing up people who thought you’d never amount to anything. If I died tomorrow, I’d really feel I enjoyed myself. How would I like to be remembered? I don’t know if I really care about being remembered. I just want to be known while I’m here. That’s enough. I didn’t like history, anyway.”
CONCLUSION
Brown, like Bender, the other entrepreneur featured in this “Interviews With” series, proves that natural born streets smarts coupled with hard work and determination are better ingredients for success in business than the best college education. Even Ross, who rose to the ranks of the highest paid top executives in our country’s biggest corporations did not have a college education. So don’t let your lack of education hold you back from your dreams. Be awesome! Be your own hero!
Learn more intimate details about other U.S. occupations from people who worked in them for years from the other articles in the “Interviews With” series.
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