Book Profiles Past, Present New Orleans Area Entrepreneurs
Book Profiles Past, Present New Orleans Area Entrepreneurs
By Kimberly Quillen, The Times-Picayune
January 03, 2010
A newly released book profiles 70 past and present New Orleans area entrepreneurs and aims to build awareness of the city's entrepreneurial momentum.
"How They Did It: Profiles of New Orleans Entrepreneurs," was published by the Idea Village, a local nonprofit that nurtures entrepreneurial ventures.
Alden "Doc" Laborde and James Martial "J.M." Lapeyre, founders of Tidewater Inc. and Laitram Corp. respectively, are featured in the book. So are Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold Chairman James R. Moffett, Ruth's Chris Steak House founder Ruth Fertel, and Edmund McIlhenny, who started the company that makes Tabasco. The book also profiles a number of up-and-coming entrepreneurs, including Hornbeck Offshore Services CEO Todd Hornbeck and Nic Perkin, founder of The Receivables Exchange.
A panel of business leaders assembled by the Idea Village selected the entrepreneurs for the 157-page book, which was written by Sally Forman, author of "Eye of the Storm: Inside City Hall during the Katrina."
"It's an inspiring look at the history of New Orleans, as told in the development of new ventures," said Mark Romig, vice president of marketing and public relations for HCA's Delta Division and chairman of the Idea Village Board of Directors.
Though the entrepreneurs span a range of industries, Forman said most share one attribute.
"The biggest (commonality) was a confidence without arrogance," she said. "Many many were very, very humble and felt as if tomorrow they could lose it all and be right back where they started. Many of them had faced adversity from an early age and so they had a tenacity to make it work and a drive that they were going to accomplish what they set out to accomplish no matter what."
The profiles, presented in a breezy question-and-answer format, also reveal interesting nuggets of information about some of the area's most noted entrepreneurs.
Taylor Energy founder Patrick Taylor, for example, displayed an early penchant for rodeoing and skydiving, his wife Phyllis sewing one of his parachutes. Fried chicken magnate Al Copeland, who started Popeye's Chicken and Biscuits, bagged groceries at Schwegmann's at an early age. And developer Roger Ogden, while still in high school, conned his father into buying a corner lot and then talked the CEO of Kroger into putting a store on the site.
In the book, Forman focuses on how each entrepreneur got his or her start and what was behind their success. For some, it was a mentor. For others, it was extraordinary drive.
"For a lot of others, it was just that they simply looked at an issue unlike the rest of the population and they saw a new solution," she said.
Many of the entrepreneurs offer up their thoughts about success in business. Restauranteur Leah Chase, for example, says in the book that success comes not by focusing on money, but by focusing on service.
The money comes after you focus on the customer, Chase says in the book.
Foreman said she wrote the book "with the hope that anybody who is starting a business or has started a business and ... needs to accelerate their growth can read it and learn something significant to boost their growth."