- [Announcer] This is a production of WEDU PBS, Tampa, St. Petersburg, Sarasota.

(gentle music) - We'd all like to know we made the world a better place to live.

One way successful entrepreneurs do that is by creating jobs and expanding the economy.

And some of those entrepreneurs use their success and business acumen to solve pressing social problems.

Clearwater business leader, Herb Brown, had a gift for growing successful businesses ranging from retail, banking, restaurants, and real estate.

He was also a servant leader who believed in acting with integrity, serving with love, and working for peace.

Herb Brown passed away in April, 2024 at the age of 100.

In 2012, the Suncoast Business Forum interviewed Herb Brown.

We are honored to re-broadcast that profile highlighting Herb Brown's life well-lived in his own words.

- [Announcer] Suncoast Business Forum, brought to you by the financial services firm of Raymond James, offering personalized wealth management advice and banking and capital markets expertise, all with a commitment to putting clients' financial wellbeing first.

More information is available at RaymondJames.com.

(bright music) - Some folks are born to be entrepreneurs.

In the 1930s, during the Great Depression, a 15-year-old high school student in Opelousas, Louisiana when door to door selling refrigerators, washing machines, and radios.

Although times were tough, young Herb Brown had a winning personality and a talent for selling.

By the time he was 19, had his first furniture and appliance store.

Fast forward 70 years and Herb Brown is still going strong with a remarkable career that includes developing the Checkers restaurant chain, and global success as past president of Rotary International.

Herb, welcome to the Suncoast Business Forum.

- Oh, thank you so much.

Great to be here.

- It's great to have you.

You know there are very few entrepreneurs who've had a 70 year track record, 75 year track record of success.

And you've done it in retailing, you've done it in banking, you've done it in real estate, and you've done it in restaurants, including, as I said, Checkers.

What is it about your business acumen, your personal business style, that allows you to be successful in so many fields?

- I just have always loved business and business activity and I've just been dedicated.

Whatever I was planning to do, I would give it my very best.

And I also had failures along the way.

But fortunately, most of the major projects and programs and businesses were successes.

- During the course of your career, you've also played leadership roles on a local, regional, national, and even an international level and community activities and community involvement.

What is it that makes being involved in terms of solving social problems so important to you?

- Well, I guess growing up in the depression as I did and knowing how tough things were, I saw so many people suffering, and just in my hometown and we'd have tramps come to our house every day for food.

And it just made me feel that if God can give me the health and the strength, I wanna do all I can for my fellow man.

I dedicated myself to that when I was a young man, actually, probably still almost a kid.

That was my greatest satisfaction, is trying to help others in need.

- You grew up in Opelousas, Louisiana.

Your father was a businessman, but he struggled.

It was a depression, am I right?

Tell us about your family and growing up in Louisiana.

- Well, my father was a very hard, hardworking man, but he really had it rough in life.

He had to go to work in the fields picking cotton, harvesting the little corn and so on with his parents and family.

And when they married, my mother was a school teacher and my daddy was a farmer.

- You worked all through school, you worked before high school, and then you actually started your own business while you were in high school.

Is that right?

- And I said, "Let's get this little store "and get some appliances "and I'll go house to house selling them."

And I'd go knock on the doors and everybody had an ice box then.

I'd say, "I can sell you a refrigerator "that will make ice for you "and you don't ever have to buy ice "for that ice box anymore."

And so on.

And a washing machine, the same thing, 'cause that was so new back at that time.

It was probably less than 5% of the people had a refrigerator and probably 1% had a washer.

And I did quite well selling those things and battery radios.

- Well, what did those early days of selling door to door teach you that stuck with you through your career?

- I guess the determination that if you gonna really work hard at whatever you want to do, you'll succeed.

And people used to say, "Boy, you really been lucky."

I said, "Yeah, I really have been lucky.

"You spell it W-O-R-K." - Now, within a few years of starting your door-to-door appliance business, you actually had the opportunity to buy a furniture store in Opelousas, Louisiana.

Which was a pretty bold move for someone who was still a teenager, am I right?

- Right.

And I just lost my dad a few months before that.

But we had the opportunity to buy the furniture business and this will shock you.

I think it was $5,000 for the business.

And we had saved up maybe $2,000 from the other business and the bank lent me, that was the toughest loan I probably ever had to make, $3,000.

And we got in the furniture business.

- Shortly after you got in the furniture business, World War II broke out and you ended up going into the military.

How did that affect your business and managing all that with family?

- Well, my mother who had never worked anything other than a school teacher, housewife, and a great, great mother and a great wife said, well, 'cause I wanted to volunteer to go into service.

And she says, "I'll stay in the store.

"I don't know how to sell anything, but I'll run the office "and watch the sales and the money."

And so, I give my mother a tremendous amount of credit to keep things going while we had World War II.

- How did your time in the military influence your business skills over time?

- Well, I'd say fate got involved in the military.

I helped run the big supply depot, then it closed up and I was transferred to Fort Sam Houston.

And I had an opportunity to go to Edgerton General School, which was a great opportunity.

Came out of that, I volunteered again, but they said, "No, we need you here."

And in essence with the training I had, I was running the reception center on a day-to-day physical bay.

Naturally there was a major and a captain above me, but they had me running it.

And so, it gave me a great opportunity to run.

I had about 300 people working for me, many civilians as well as military.

- So, you had an opportunity to learn some business operation skills in the military?

- Yeah, I did.

Yeah, I had never run company that big.

- After the Army, you returned to Opelousas, Louisiana.

You had your furniture store, you rescued your mom from operations.

- [Herb] Yeah.

- But you also grew the business pretty rapidly, didn't you?

- Yeah, I think I got out about in August and by the 1st of January, I'd opened a store in Ville Platte, Louisiana, about 18 miles away and about 30 days later, a bigger store in Lafayette, Louisiana.

So, I was a three-store furniture man.

- In addition to your three new furniture stores, you also ventured into other businesses.

You got involved with restaurants, you got involved with banking, you got involved in farming, and real estate development, am I right?

All around the same time?

- We had a great opportunity for opening a bank and I went around and invited what I felt was about the top lawyer in Opelousas and the top doctor and the top businessman and the top farmers and so on.

And we had a real nice board of men on the board.

And it was quite successful.

- But you were still a young man.

You were kind of improvising this as you went because you'd been in the military, you'd been in the furniture business, you'd done some farming and ranching.

Now you're a banker.

You did some real estate development too, am I right?

- Yeah, we built the first shopping center in Opelousas and one of the first in south Louisiana.

'Cause remember, no building had been going on during the war.

And I was able to get financing.

And that center is still open today.

- In 1953, you married Diane, your wife, who has been a lifelong partner and has played a big role in your success.

Tell us about her.

- Well, Diane is the kindest, most loving person.

And I'm the luckiest man in the world to get her as a wife.

And we made a wonderful team.

She wasn't a business person, she didn't wanna be involved in the business, but she gave me the courage, the faith, the strength, the hope, and the support to keep me going.

And I never ever neglected my children or my wife for business.

That came first.

Family and God and country.

Then we worry about businesses.

- In the 1950s and the 1960s, you actually pioneered discount retailing.

You started with furniture, but you branched out way beyond furniture.

Tell us about the discount business, the retailing business.

- Well, I was watching retailers.

It was a successful retailer in New Orleans with grocery business and a drug business.

And the promotions he had run and so on.

I thought, "Well, I don't know "why I can't do something like that."

And I got to thinking if I could put a drug store in a big building and get a grocery store in it and an appliance store, automotive type store and all that, I leased them out.

And we built the first major 55,000 foot discount store in Louisiana, in fact, a fellow by the name Sam Walton opened his store about the same time we opened ours.

And we were so successful in the drug department, which we kept, we didn't lease that out, that we built a chain of 40 discount drug stores and our prescriptions ran less than 50% of what these little small drug stores were getting.

So needless to say, we did a tremendous business.

- So, you built up 40 discount drug stores in Louisiana and then you got a call from a drug store owner in Florida, am I right?

- Yeah, a fellow by the name of Jack Eckerd.

- [Interviewer] Tell us about that.

- Well, I'd never heard of Jack Eckerd or Eckerd Drugs, but they called and said he'd like to come down and see us.

So, he wanted to talk about possibly buying us out.

I said, "Well, we don't really want to sell."

And so, we got to talking some more and talking about a possible merge our stores with his.

Well, it was an excellent deal.

Gave me an opportunity to be a fairly good sized stockholder in Eckerds.

Be his senior vice president and be a member of the board.

- So your career was growing fast.

Eckerd Corporation was growing fast, but 1971, your family suffered a tragedy that led to your leaving Eckerd at that point, am I right?

Tell us about that.

- Yeah, it's the toughest thing I've ever endured in my life.

To lose a really great, fine, devoutly religious, great athlete, youngest Eagle Scout in Louisiana at age 13 and a half, my son, Herbert Graham Brown, but we just called him Graham, in a tragic boating accident that he was thrown into the dock at our home.

I was in the backyard and they came screaming for me.

And I got there to see my son taking his last breath.

Only God can give you enough strength to survive, 'cause I didn't think I could make it, but we made it.

- You stayed on a little bit longer with the Eckerd Corporation, but after a while you told Jack Eckerd it's time to move on.

- I went to Jack, this happened in May, and I went to Jack in November and said, "I've tried, "but with these new stores in Houston and Dallas "and Atlanta that I've been running to "and helping do all that, "I can't leave my wife with four children "ages 6, 8, 10, and 15."

- After a period of healing, you went back into business.

You went into retailing once again.

- I knew the furniture business and didn't want to try to compete with Jack Eckerd.

I wouldn't have done that regardless if I thought I could have been extremely successful, no way would I have done that.

So, I opened a couple of furniture stores and promoted them and did extremely well there.

- These were Brown's Furniture stores?

- Yeah, Brown's Furniture Distributors.

New Port Richie was the first one, then Clearwater, then Bradenton.

But I saw some great real estate opportunities here.

I just really couldn't believe the opportunities that was here that people really didn't seem to, at that time, be that interested in real estate.

And I started buying real estate.

I'd get partners, local partners with me and we'd buy track of land and resell it.

- You were buying land, you were developing shopping centers, you built residential properties as well, am I right?

- Yeah, we bought 3000 acre track at State Road 54, about three miles east of the interstate.

And we developed a 1000-acre subdivision, part residential and part mobile homes.

And we saved the frontage for commercial.

And in fact, that's being worked on now, the commercial part.

And I've turned that over to son-in-Law, Lee Arnold and son, Jared and Greg and the families, that they will be developing all of that.

- In 1983, your sons Jared and Greg joined you in business.

Tell us about having your sons as your business partners.

- It's wonderful.

Nobody could be happier than to have his own sons working with him.

Jared laughed.

He said the first thing I told him, "Well, now we got to get down to work "and get the college out of you "and you can learn the ropes of the business world."

- In the late 1980s, your son Greg, brought you a new business opportunity.

Actually it was a struggling restaurant in Alabama.

- A real estate buddy of mine said, "You know, there's a," I don't know how he had heard about it, "but there's a three store chain named Checkers," which I'd never heard of in Mobile, Alabama.

"And they're about to go under, "they're struggling and so on.

"You ought to look into that."

So that, Greg went down, I didn't, and looked at it and came back and said, "Dad, they got the best burger.

"And I know."

I said, "Yeah, you specialized in eating burger."

And he says, "They got the best burger.

"They got a fast food operation that's second to none.

"Nobody does it like they do it.

"It's a double drive through and all that."

And he says, "We can get that chain "and we'll move it to Florida."

And I said, well, I went down the next week with him and we looked at it and I agreed with everything he had said.

Quality was, quite frankly, far superior than these other chains.

And make a very long story short, we merged with 'em.

They were willing to sell the whole thing.

But I said, "No, let's go into a partnership."

And we did with Jim Matay and his partner and we moved it to Florida and it was a phenomenal success.

Before too long we started franchising.

- Why did you believe Checkers, which was a very small company at this point, could take on the giants, McDonald's and Burger King?

- Well, we thought we could deliver and were delivering a better product at half the price.

They had gotten very pricey because it wasn't much competition back then.

And that quarter pound burger was $1.99 and we came out with one that everybody acclaimed to just being the best burger in town at 99 cents.

It's just unbelievable how we could go into a town and be the highest volume stores in the community.

We were extremely successful until McDonald's dropped from $1.99 to 99 cents.

- Where they still are today.

- And they still are today.

They realized they had to do it at 99 cents.

- So let's switch gears now.

Let's talk about Rotary International.

In 1982, you took over as chair of Rotary's Health, Hunger, and Humanities Initiative and that allowed you to travel the world on behalf of Rotary.

How did that influence you?

- I've been privileged.

I've been to 80 some countries of the world and to India five or six times, Japan, five or six, Korea.

I've done a lot of traveling and seen a lot of things.

And it took all the clubs in the world to accomplish the major missions that Rotary undertook world law, 'cause Rotary is an organization today of over 200 countries and areas, and they've done wonderful work.

And I could spend the next five hours telling you about rotary programs and things I've seen and things I've helped participate in.

- You also chaired Rotary International's Polio Plus Committee.

And in 1988, which is about the time you were involved, there were 500,000 cases of polio in the world.

And today there are less than 200.

- I feel honored that I was first chairman of the Health, Hunger and Humanity, then I was chairman of the Polio Plus Program.

We raised, to get it started, we raised, well, given a quota of 80 million.

The rest of the world was given a quota of 60 million.

And I said, "$80 million, but let's see if we can do it."

And we didn't raise 80 million.

We raised 140 million.

- In 1995, you became president of Rotary International.

What was the theme of your presidency?

- My theme was act with integrity, serve with love, and work for peace.

If there's ever been a need for integrity, we've needed it during these recent years.

Serve with love is what anybody that's serving, whether they're serving to help people in Clearwater or help people in Africa, wherever, you're serving with love, you're giving of your love, your heart, and support.

Let's see, act with integrity, serve with love, and work for peace.

And God knows we need peace.

- You've spent a lifetime and you've spent your career helping others.

But your wife, Diane, also is very active in helping others.

- Many years ago she said, "I've prayed and prayed "and walked the beaches "and the Lord's calling me to a ministry "to open up to give people the opportunity to learn more "about religion and the love of God "and to change their lives "and for them to work in that churches and all that."

And she started the first House of Prayer.

Now I think she has about 16 or 17 as far away as Boston coming down the Atlantic coast.

She has some going in Louisiana and Mississippi and Texas.

And the work that she's done over these years was the Lord's calling.

And though it was a tragedy to lose our son, we've tried to make up for it in many ways.

And I'm blessed to have that wife, have four wonderful children, nine grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren.

That's my success, to be the most fortunate and happiest and luckiest man in the world.

- Herb, I'd like to thank you so much for being our guest today.

It's been great having you.

- [Herb] Thank you.

It's been great being here.

- If you'd like to see this interview or any of the CEO profiles in our Suncoast Business Forum archives, you can find us on the web at wedu.org/sbf.

Thanks for joining us for the Suncoast Business Forum.

(bright music)