The Mentors

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Sutherland starts each weekday by trading stocks on-line from home. He's up by 6:30 to read the overnight business news before wandering into his home office. There is a lone book on the shelf above the computer, Burden of Truth, by Charles Colson, once of Watergate fame and since born again. The TV is on, with CNBC's talking heads jabbering away. Sutherland's Compaq computer, black and as sleek as a Ferrari, radiates a glittery array of stock quotes and market information. His goal is to make $500 in the first half hour of trading by taking a big position in one blue-chip stock that seems particularly active--and then quickly dumping it at a gain of a half point or so, before heading out the door to pan other streams of cash.

On this day Sutherland squeezes a half point out of 1,100 shares of Microsoft, which he holds for 20 minutes before heading for his chariot in the garage, a bright red Jeep Cherokee. Loose-leaf binders on the backseat contain study materials for the broker's exam; some of his insurance clients now want him to start trading for them. "People like to see success. You know what I'm saying? And besides, I enjoy the ride and thrill of the stock market," he says. A sign nailed to a tree advertises a nearby empty lot for sale, with Sutherland's name and phone number on it. He bought the land for $19,000 last December. In January he was offered $28,000 for it, but he's holding out for $30,000.

Highway 167 leads north out of Little Rock into lush farmland before rising through rolling piney hills and toward the Ozarks beyond. Sutherland, with his cell phone perched on the console, sips a large coffee from McDonald's drive-up window. He is heading out to look at a piece of land in Greers Ferry, about an hour north, on which he's hoping to roll out more mini-storage lockers.

About 20 minutes outside Little Rock, Sutherland motions admiringly through the windshield at a picturesque hilltop horse farm belonging to one of the owners of the Indiana Pacers basketball team. The foreground offers simpler domestic displays: trailer as home, tar paper as construction material, automobile as lawn sculpture. As he drives Sutherland focuses on other roadside attractions: car washes and mini-storage facilities, two businesses he knows something about.

Sutherland learned from Walton the value of tempering action with sound preparation. "Sam always did his homework," he says, adding, "I think people don't do their homework. They don't see all the pros and cons, the whole picture. I've got to be able to envision exactly what I want to do."

Sutherland got into the car-wash business because it was a cash business, the cost of entry was low, and the number of car washes in his neighborhood were few. The business beckoned. But still, he didn't plunge right in. "I didn't do anything right away. I subscribed to Car Wash magazine for a year," he says. He did some seat-of-the-pants market research on a nearby competitor. "I sat right across the street and counted the cars at that car wash once a week for two months," he recalls. He called the city to get more traffic information, learning that 20,000 cars would pass his proposed car wash daily. He sent out 10,000 pieces of direct mail, polling strangers on their car-washing habits. He looked at every car wash within a 100-mile radius. People, he discovered, wanted two things: cleanliness and equipment that works.

Suffused with market intelligence, Sutherland still waited for a critical piece to fall into place. Across the street from his proposed site lay a 42-acre parcel of land. "I was always scoping that land out; I knew there was interest in it," he says. Sutherland worked his sources in the business community and in the town planning office, finally learning that an apartment complex was planned for the site. He called the developer, who confirmed the project. He then talked to town surveyors and the planning commission to gauge how receptive they'd be to a car wash at his proposed site.

The land he wanted was owned by a widow who had little interest in selling--and less in talking to Sutherland. She was asking $80,000. After six weeks of on-and-off-again conversations, Sutherland sweet-talked her down to $60,000. By the time the story broke in the local paper, announcing the proposed apartment complex, he had signed a purchase agreement for the land across the street.

Sutherland is a stranger to business failure. Nothing he's started has ever flopped. He believes he will prevail in business because he has internalized something Sam Walton told him: If you want it bad enough, you'll find a way to do it. "There's a steep price you pay for success, and successful people in business know that," says Sutherland. "Doing the things I've done has not come easy. There's been a lot of sacrifice."

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