Adventures of a Serial Entrepreneur

By Bill Forhan

Bio of a Serial Entrepreneur, first editionSerial Entrepreneur, second editionWilliam G. Forhan, known as Bill Forhan, was born, raised, and educated in Michigan, and he also spent the major part of his life in business in Michigan before relocating to Florida to continue in business ventures.Upon retiring five years ago from major businesses, Bill decided to write Bio of a Serial Entrepreneur, first edition.The first-edition book was written with the intension of reflecting on his business and personal life.He decided to share his story with readers that seek reading enjoyment and share some business insight.His retirement from major businesses is because of the slow onset of Parkinson's disease, which has limited his mobility in walking or doing sports, which he misses (golf and tennis). Also, he has a breathing disorder that he has gained control over (emphysema).He has a clear, creative mind and is computer literate. Becoming an author started a new career.For clarity purposes, an entrepreneur is an individual who sets up business or businesses; identifies and solves problems, I creative, innovative, an opportunist, a risk-taker, a self-starter, and open-minded with the hope of making a profit from the enterprise.The major types of entrepreneurs:Serial entrepreneur. Continuously comes up with new ideas, starts the businesses, and oftentimes sells to investors or shareholders. Serial entrepreneurs start the businesses with little intention of operating any of them for a long time. They are high risk-takers with lots of unique ideas and are not always interested in a career with a particular business/company.Lifestyle entrepreneur. Creates profit from pure passion. The lifestyle entrepreneur chooses to build a business they are passionate about and grows the business into a long-term, residual income that is sustainable.Social entrepreneur. Pursues solutions to social problems. As a serial entrepreneur, Bill has started and purchased over fifty-five companies in multiple industries ranging in a size of five employees to two hundred. The companies were in the travel and medical industries. Seven of the companies were public trading on the OTCBB (over-the-counter BB), and seven operated as private companies.He was the CEO of all the companies and took the profits of many companies to purchase or start up new companies; this included the risk of his personal funds for investments.During Bill's business years, he traveled to many destinations: ten European countries; South America: Rio de Janeiro; Asia: Hong Kong; and Hawaii, one hundred times over.He cruised the Caribbean over twenty-five times and visited many resorts in North America and more.His story will take you down his memory days of over fifty years of building many companies, some winners and some losers.Bill has had several success stories and some mistakes through his journey.We hope you can enjoy reading and find wisdom in how to become an entrepreneur by reading Serial Entrepreneur.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Nov 21, 2022
• ISBN: 9781662451492

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Adventures of a Serial Entrepreneur

Bill Forhan

Copyright © 2022 Bill Forhan

All rights reserved

First Edition

PAGE PUBLISHING

Conneaut Lake, PA

First originally published by Page Publishing 2022

ISBN 978-1-6624-5148-5 (pbk)

ISBN 978-1-6624-5149-2 (digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Foreword

Introduction

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About the Author

To my wife, Mary Tiffany, thanks for being on my side for the past ten years, and the start of a new life together.

Foreword

I have acquired, started and operated over 60 companies. I served as Chairman CEO of the 60 companies. My stories are outlined in this book, I will share my experiences; outlining the strategy of acquiring and operating the companies.

The companies were in over 20 Industries, 7 of the acquisitions were public companies. I filed seven S-1 Registrations with the Security Exchange Commission forming OTCBB companies, (Over the Counter Bulletin Board). Most of the companies had synergies with companies that I already owned, allowing me to increase revenues and profits.

The majority of the industries were in the Travel sector; therefore, I will start my Journeys and Ventures with a brief history of the Travel Industry.

The leisure travel industry started in 1850 via Steam Powered Train that took 5 days to travel from New York to San Fran.

The second travel industry began in 1891. beginning with transatlantic crossings from European ports of call to NY harbor. Three classes of service were offered. It took nine nights for the crossing.

The Queen Mary, British Cunard Lines sailed from 1936 to1967 transported many travelers to the United States, and many who entered through Ellis Island, NY. with dreams of beginning a new life in America.

The vacation cruise market came much later, in mid century: 1960's. Today there are over 50 cruise companies offering a mass market of cruises at affordable prices.

Also to be noted, is the tragic memory of the transatlantic crossing of the Titanic, which sank in 1912 with 1,500 of its 2,228 passengers aboard after crashing into an iceberg.

The 3rd mode of travel was via car, the Ford Model T became economical costing $250–$800; families could afford vacations and travel was starting to increase: demand for hotels and restaurants; (Chains) started 2 additional industries.

Pan American was the 1st leisure aircraft starting in 1927–1991 and Howard Hughes started TWA 1930–1985. They were the only American Airlines.

Airlines started a new industry known as the Airline Industry.

The travel industry became the leisure marketplace and the world was changing, it was offering people the opportunity to afford to visit the world; today the most desired activity after retirement is to travel.

1960 was the beginning of a larger travel demand. when air travel began with prop aircraft followed jet service, followed through out the world.

American airlines were not given licenses to travel worldwide: governments supported their respective Airlines: Iberia Airlines was Spain, British Airlines was United Kingdom, France was Air France, Germany is Lufthansa; the airfares were established by the respective country.

Travel Agencies were licensed with the Airline Reporting Company (ARC) to receive airline, hotel, cruise lines and car rental commissions starting in 1965. The travel agents had to be licensed with a $50,000 Bond that was paid weekly for all of the airline ticketing.

The Travel Agency was paid a commission of 8%–10% from travel suppliers 10 days after reporting sales to ARC. Airline revenue was the largest weekly payment to the Travel Agency.

Car rentals became a vehicle for the vacation family. It offered an alternative transportation solution for a family of four to drive a new car for their vacation; it was the most economical transportation.

The Travel Industries that I experienced had many synergies that increased revenues and profits: there are many travel memories, and I have many stories to share with you.

Travel increased further when companies used car rentals, hotel rooms and meals for business meetings; and social events.

I owned Motivation Planners an Incentive Travel Company, another industry and Motivation Travel became a Business Travel Company, making reservations for all of the needs of the business traveler.

Bill Forhan

Motivation Travel, Motivation Planners

CEO

Introduction

The purpose of this book is to share my experiences as an entrepreneur—the good, the bad, and the humorous events. I hope the reader can relate to some of the same challenges and enjoy reading the stories I share and relate to his or her similar experiences.

This bio is written in chronological order, and I have noted the subject followed in numerical order creating a Table of Contents, such as Business #5. The subject is business, and #5 is the fifth item in the Table of Contents known as the chapter.

The chapters are not always in chronological order due to stories taking you occasionally to a flashback event.

I have been active in several business transactions and have been nicknamed as a serial entrepreneur or an entrepreneur who continuously comes up with new ideas and starts new businesses, unrelated to current status.

I have been involved in more than 114 transactions of over fifty-seven companies, including acquisitions, mergers, start-ups and sale of companies; they were mostly small companies bred from ideas and one common thread in them: They were all underfunded, and most had synergy with companies that I was purchasing or needed the services that I was acquiring.

A sample is the start-up of four fifty-passenger motor coaches, a company known as Interstate Motor Coach that was a supplier for transfers from the airport to a casino and/or a sightseeing tour from the hotel in four deluxe coaches, totaling $1.6 million in investments. The motor coach company becomes a subsidiary, and its profits or losses are consolidated in the holding company.

The motor coach company (Interstate) earns a profit, and the holding company owns a profitable subsidiary, increasing the holding company's profits.

I did one to three transactions a year for over fifty years (never a boring year), and I was personally busy operating and marketing each business; financial records were handled by an employed accountant, a controller, a CFO, and/or an independent CPA firm for reviewed or audited financials required for one of my public companies.

The companies were public companies trading on the OTCBB exchange or a private company transaction. The private companies were funded by myself as an equity transaction or a personal investment, and the public companies were used for raising money via selling public stocks to individuals or using the company's restricted shares for cash. Plus we used the public shares to buy acquisitions.

I was the chairman CEO of all the companies, seven public and seven private companies, including all subsidiaries. That is why I had the name serial entrepreneur, and it was a journey up and down roads of success and losses.

I like the excitement of buying and/or starting companies and trying to use synergism to grow the new company, keeping the management of the purchased company; no one should know the company better than the management of the acquired company.

Today I am seventy-six years of age, five feet, ten inches tall, lots of strawberry-blond hair, weighing at 160 pounds, and have lost my sports activity due to constant dizziness caused by Parkinson's disease (PK). I used to be active, weekly playing golf and tennis and jogging daily until age sixty-six. I am soft-spoken with a Midwestern accent and slow in talking, today becoming slower due to PK.

I dressed in suits for the first five years of business at a rent-a-car company, Avis, and upgraded to tailored navy blue, gray, and black three-piece pin-striped suits. I visited Asian cities in 1977 and found custom suits and shirts a bargain, buying two suits and six monogrammed shirts the first visit, followed with the purchase of two suits and six shirts every four to six months when the tailor made calls in my office for the next twenty years. I stopped that practice when my closet had over fifty three-piece suits and one hundred dress shirts. I gave most of them to family and friends. Today I own two suits and five custom shirts.

I enjoyed work, being the first one in the office and the last to leave, setting an example and doing a business lunch five days a week. My dinners were mostly business also: two to three dinners with staff a week. I ate three meals a day outside the house. I had the cleanest oven (never used it) and refrigerator (beverages, ice cream, and fruit).

My bio tells you more about me. I hope you enjoy and learn how to be a successful entrepreneur.

The names of all the people, cities, and companies are nonfictional, including my name.

1

In the Beginning

I was born New Year's Day, January 1, 1945, in Wyandotte, Michigan, in a hospital located in a blue-collar community, where most homeowners lived in 1,000–1,500 sq. ft. homes. The families were from Poland and other European countries.

2

Childhood

I was the only child until I was fifteen. Mom had a girl, and I had a sister, Diane. I welcomed her to the family. I grew up as an only child as my parents worked full-time, including many weekends, and I lived alone five days a week.

My early years, from ages five to eight, involved walking to school seven to eight blocks from home at 8:00 a.m. and going to another family's home after school at 3:30 p.m. and staying with friends of my family until my mom met me at a bus stop that was three blocks away at 5:15 p.m. at the bus stop after she returned from work.

One rainy cold night, I was waiting for the bus. I was cold and wet, and I went into a drugstore to keep waiting and stay warm. Maybe five minutes went by when a customer (a guy) asked me what I was doing in a store by myself. He offered me a ride home. I said no; my mom would not know where I was, and she would be worried. Somehow he convinced me to go with him because home was only three miles away. I said okay. Upon my departure, my mom arrived thirty minutes late due to missing the bus from work. I was not there; she asked people in the store about me, but no one had seen me. She panicked and raced home via a friend's car to find me in the house relaxed and watching TV.

A kid had just been kidnapped a week earlier, so she anticipated the worst. I got a beating when Dad got home. The driver that took me home was never seen again. I assumed he was doing a nice service; Mom assumed the worst. The first mistake of my life.

Recalling my life experiences is not too unusual for a kid growing up in 1955 to 1965 (age ten to twenty). Both of my parents worked, and I was by myself from 8:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m., Monday to Friday.

I remember our furnace was fueled by black coal that was delivered to the driveway and shoveled into the basement and eventually shoveled into the furnace, and then the coal became a large cinder that had to be removed from the furnace through the basement window, onto the driveway and then loaded onto the coal truck. I was happy when the landlord upgraded our furnace to gas fuel. It was one chore I did not enjoy.

My neighbors were friendly. I knocked on their doors every three and four days a week to pick up their empty bottles of beer and sodas and then take these to a neighborhood grocery store that paid $0.05 to return bottles; I could make $2.00 to $3.00 a day. I expanded my neighborhood and increased my profits. I started my serial entrepreneur years at seven years of age, increasing my revenues by adding new products: picking up old newspapers and delivering to the same grocery store for pennies per pound. The next revenue stream I created was shoveling snow in the winter and raking leaves in the fall. I had five to six customers that used my services weekly. They were all friendly and welcomed my services. I was happy to earn a few dollars. I ran this small business for several years. I always had a few quarters in my pockets.

What did I do with all this money? I went to the movies for $0.20 a ticket. I bought cupcakes and candy at the grocery store. I walked two miles to the bowling alley and bowled two to three games on Saturdays. I purchased ice cream bars. Remember the white ice cream trucks that went up and down the street playing music and driving slowly, waiting for the kids to run in the house for money to buy an ice cream bar?

The goals I had were similar to many others: maintain better-than-average grades in a public school, stay out of trouble (no fights with any of the bullies), make enough money to pay my personal expenses in junior and high school, pay all my college bills, own a car in high school, date the prettiest gal, and hang around with the smartest kids in school.

My mom wanted to meet the friends I had. She would always say that she could tell me what kind of kid I was by the friends I hung around with; she was correct, and that theory applies today.

My early years were noneventful. I never did anything wrong: no smoking or drinking alcohol. I went to school with no complaints—I rarely missed a day in four years of high school. I went to church every Sunday and sang in the adult choir.

I had simple goals: I wanted to improve my family's financial status, marry a good-looking gal, and stay ahead of the annual expenses of a middle-class family. What does that mean? Well, my neighborhood was blue-collar. Most homes were 1,000–1,500 sq. ft. with a one-car garage housing a used Ford or Chevrolet car. A few luxury cars were sprinkled in the neighborhood. A Cadillac or Lincoln was a symbol of success and a goal to reach for.

The kids in my neighborhood played football, baseball, and basketball and stayed out of trouble. We played our sports in our backyards, mostly pitching baseballs in the alley between our homes, shooting basketballs off the garage backboard, playing horse, playing one-on-one basketball, and playing three-man football in the streets. I had three neighbor boy friends within one block, and we kept one another entertained with sports and watching TV programs like American Bandstand, Leave it to Beaver, The Nelsons, Father Knows Best, etc.

Life was simple. No temptations of liquor or drugs in school. I remember when Sundays were a day of worship and family dinners. Retail stores were closed on Sunday. Gas stations sold only gas and oil, and they had a guy that washed your car's windshield while the gas was pumped in the car. He would check the tire pressure. Service was important back then. I remember when a gallon of gas cost $0.20 in the 1960s.

Those were the good old days. I remember them well.

I moved in the ninth grade to a nearby school in the early sixties. My childhood friends were too far away to keep in touch, and making new friends was the next challenge. Making new friends was not easy as all the kids were entering high school and my classmates had their own circle of friends and a new environment in a new school. My circle of friends included two guys that I have kept in touch with over the past fifty-nine years, talking to them two to three times a year.

The city was also a blue-collar city located on the Detroit River dotted with steel mills and painting manufacturers. They all used the river to drop their toxic waste, eliminating fishing. We were all happy with the environment; no concern with waste in the river; it created jobs that were union pay.

I must admit I did not miss out with high school social life, attending all the dances and social activities, including church socials with my classmates. Mom wanted me to bring my dates over for inspection. She was impressed with each gal I brought over.

I was always reviewed by the parents of the gals I took out. I assume all parents are interested in their kid's friends. I impressed several parents because I had a job and worked many hours a week; plus I had my own car. I can remember three mothers that shopped at the meat store where I worked at introducing me to their daughters. Who would have dreamed of meeting good-looking gals at work and being introduced by their parents? Two of the three gals became homecoming queen, and one became the top of the class and became valedictorian.

January 1961

3

MY First CAR

I had a car given to me from my parents on my sixteenth birthday, and it became my transportation to work and school. It was a ten-year-old Pontiac coupe with beige exterior and light-brown interior, two-door with leather seats for four passengers, but it had body damage at the front and rear end of the exterior. The car cost $200. It was not a cool car, but it was transportation that cruised down the highway in a straight eight-engine—perfect for dating and getting me to work.

Having a car meant I could go back to my hometown and see a few friends that I had not seen since I moved to a new high school. I was not looking to hang out with the guys and gals. I just wanted to say hi after not hearing from anyone for two years. We all had our lifestyles, and it seemed like nothing had changed. We were two years older and wiser.

I met a gal that I remember as the best-looking gal in class when I departed from the first public school I attended; well, she looked even better as a sixteen-year-old cheerleader. We dated for two years in that Pontiac. Like I said, it was transportation. It got me to her home that was ten miles away most of the time.

One sunny Sunday, I departed home to pick her up and found a flat tire. I changed the tire with my spare and stopped at a gas station to fix the original and bought another used tire and continued to her house. Now the spare tire went flat, which I changed with the used spare tire I just purchased; that's two tires before getting to her home, and yes, at the end of the date, I had the third tire go flat. I purchased better-used tires ASAP. I could not afford four new tires. Funny, I remember that day, but I do not remember where we went on the date.

I remember another date with Alice. I brought two pounds of ground beef that I prepared at the butcher shop and a dozen burger buns for her mother. Her mom was surprised and impressed. She said it was the most unusual gift for a date that she had heard of, not a bouquet of flowers for her daughter.

Our relationship continued for a total of two years. We went to her prom together, to the surprise of many schoolmates, and we celebrated her high school graduation as the winner of the Val Victorian Award.

Alice also became homecoming queen, the second gal that I dated that won the award. Alice went to university and married a fellow student and had six kids.

A humble beginning.

January 1963

4

Goals and College

I worked many days, and especially my senior year, having a full-time job at a local prime meat shop that offered customers prime meats and assorted gourmet foods, and was known for their prime meats. The owner was a hardworking entrepreneur that worked sixteen hours a day, six days a week. He also gave me a job during Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays while I attended college; he needed extra help for the holidays, and I needed cash income; it worked out for both of us—plus, I got a chance to see many customers.

Goals

I wanted all the material things for comfort: a smart and good-looking wife, a home with three bedrooms, two new cars every three years, two children, and enough income to save money for a business I could own. I wanted to be financially successful by age forty. I knew I wanted to be a leader in business and provide more for my family than I had as a kid and be one of the most successful of my high school class.

I was naive regarding what kind of jobs were available: doctors and lawyers, firemen, cops, teachers, athletes, auto factory laborers. I was not prepared for career planning in high school and thought I would figure it out in college.

College

I was offered four years' tuition paid at a university, a $2,000-per-year value to me. The reason I qualified was because of my high school debating skills. I was the captain of the high school debate team my second and third years of high school; I won a few debates and competed for state championships, but I was never the champion for either year.

It was fun and challenging. I don't remember the subject for the first year. The second-year subject was "Should public schools