"How it all started..."

E. J. Ourso, for whom LSU's College of Business was named in 1997, is not only the College's financial benefactor but also an  educational contributor.  Many times, over the last two decades, he has talked to classes about his experience as an entrepreneur.  He likes to talk with the young people - students in the E. J. Ourso College of Business' MBA program - who come to see him at his house on St. Charles Avenue.  Professor Robert Justis brings students from his entrepreneurship classes to the house, and E. J.  talks with them in a large room on the first floor, where he has chairs and a desk set up in an informally arranged classroom.
"Don't be surprised if I don't sound like your professors at the university," he says.  Leaning forward, eagerly, he thinks: they are waiting for the truth.  Lord help me. 
He begins by saying that this "Entrepreneurship class"  should not be thought of as a class in small business management.  "Entrepreneurship is not a matter of small business management.  A class with this title is about growing a business, expansion."  He notes that most entrepreneurs he has known, or known about - John Folse or Billy Guillot of his hometown, Donaldsonville, or like Microsoft's Bill Gates - started out small but immediately set about getting bigger and bigger.  "They all started out small and got big," he says. 
 
As for E. J. and his wife Marjory - the best business decision he ever made, he says without hesitation, was marrying Marjory, "best decision, period" - they started out in 1947 with a capital investment of $10,000.  Two years later they made their first acquisition.  In forty-eight years they made fifty-six acquisitions.  "And, believe it or not," he says, "we made the first twenty-five with no cash."  His fellow entrepreneurs in the Harvard Young Presidents Club dubbed him "No Cash Ourso."  When the students ask how he managed that, he tells them "Choose a business where your clients come back and back and back.  You don't want to be selling a single item and then another and another, but rather you want to be establishing a pattern, an ongoing service relationship."  Insurance - E. J. and Marjory made their mark in the funeral home and burial insurance business - is a perfect example.  "Each week, or month, or year the premiums are paid; the surplus builds up.  It compounds.  Early encounters establish the foundation for long-term relationships," he explains.  In 1996 he and Marjory sold the business for $180 million. 
 
E. J. encourages the students.  "Look," he says, "if an uneducated country boy from Donaldsonville can make it, think what someone with your educational advantages might be able to accomplish.  I had to read books and educate myself as I went along.  You," he exclaims, "will start out knowing all sorts of things I had to learn the hard way."  He hopes the students will leave his house at the end of the day changed in some way, however slight, that will make a real difference in their lives.