'A Giant Within'

'A Giant Within'

Entrepreneurs by Francis X. Gilpin | Associate Editor

David D. Lowrey was on his way to becoming a history professor until he read a book during his senior year at a Virginia college.

"Awakening the Giant Within," by leadership guru Anthony Robbins, convinced Lowrey to drop out of Emory & Henry College in 1995 and take a string of menial jobs until he could get a business off the ground.

Last year, that business, Apartment Express Corporate Housing Inc. climbed to No. 194 on Inc. magazine's list of the 500 fastest-growing private companies in America. Lowrey's company, which lines up shelter for temporary workers in the Tampa Bay area, brings in annual revenue of more than $5 million.

Making the Inc. 500 was an early goal of Lowrey and business partner Christopher D. Mercer when they formed Apartment Express seven years ago.

"I thought to be an entrepreneur, you had to have great skills and be a wonderful people person," Lowrey recently told a group of University of Tampa business majors. "All these different things that I didn't have."

But the Robbins book demonstrated to him that business success was more about tenacity and keeping customers happy – not to mention the freedom to decide your own fate.

"When you have your own business, you're going to pay a price for that freedom," says Lowrey. "It's hard, but when you get over that and you're actually doing well, it's pretty nice."

A traditional corporate environment never much appealed to Lowrey. "It's not necessarily about serving the customer," he told the students. "It's about protecting fiefdoms and how am I going to get promoted and kissing the boss's butt."

Quirkiness is allowed when you run your own show. "If you're eccentric," he says, "business is pretty cool because you can set the culture." Employees at Apartment Express, which experienced a 567% jump in revenue during a recent three-year period, can bring their dogs to work. "They're fun to play with," Lowrey says of the pets around the office.

Day job

Entrepreneurship didn't run in Lowrey's family. His mother was a legal secretary. He says his father died a homeless alcoholic. "When I was a kid, I really didn't start any businesses," Lowrey says. "I wish I had. It would make a better story."

For the first four years after dropping out of college, Lowrey worked as a carpenter's helper, stock clerk, waiter and bus boy. Then, he landed a job as an administrative assistant to the head of an apartment-finding agency.

After a dispute with his boss, Lowrey quit and joined Mercer, one of the agency's top sales representatives, in starting Apartment Express.

Lowrey already was more than $30,000 in debt from real estate investments that hadn't panned out.

He used up the last $5,000 or so on his credit card limit to buy computers to start matching apartments to tenants.

During the first year, Lowrey delivered Pap John's pizzas at night because he was reinvesting the initial meager earnings from Apartment Express back into the company.

The 1999 profit worked out to be 10 cents for every hour that Lowery worked. "I was so terrified," recalls the 35-year-old Lowrey. "I dropped out of college. I'm delivering pizzas at night. I am starting this business and all these things are going wrong. It's a lot of fear."

Bigger isn't better

Lowrey says Mercer, 30, is the detail-oriented strategist of the two. They keep each other's spirits up. "It's nice having a partner," Lowrey says, "because some days I just feel like a complete, miserable failure."

Eventually, the pair figured out they could make more money if they concentrated on helping companies find short-term employee housing.

There was just one problem. "We knew absolutely nothing about the business," Lowrey says. "So we went out and found somebody who used to work in the business. We talked to her for about two hours and that was our education."

Although Apartment Express competes locally against national corporate-relocation outfits, Lowrey says his company is more flexible.

He and Mercer weren't fazed when Sony PlayStations, big-screen televisions or other special requests were made for living quarters.

"That's one of the things you really have to understand when you compete against the bigger companies," he says. "You are going to be so much faster, so much quicker, so much hungrier and customers are going to like that."

Apartment Express is the one entering into long-term leases now, not their old apartment-hunting clients. Their furnished units, which generally turn over every 30 to 90 days, are located in upscale multifamily complexes constructed within the past five years. Places that will ease the homesickness of corporate or government travelers on temporary job assignments in the Bay area.

Handing over the keys

With about 20 employees today, Apartment Express practically runs itself. Lowrey and Mercer each work just 2½ days a week. Their workweek at Apartment Express disappears altogether in July.

Lowrey and Mercer are selling Apartment Express for an amount equal to their projected gross profit for the next five years, according to Lowrey.

The real estate market has turned around for Lowrey, too. He and Mercer manage a multimillion-dollar portfolio of residential properties, some of which they recently have sold off at what they believe is the peak of the current real estate cycle.

Lowrey hints that they have plenty of cash and financing for the next anticipated phase of the market. "We're waiting for it to tank," he says. "Then there's going to be enormous, enormous opportunities as an investor, if you're educated and ready to take advantage."

Meanwhile, after they close on the sale of Apartment Express, Lowrey plans to finish up the undergraduate requirements for his history degree at Emory & Henry. Mercer is enrolling at the University of Florida and getting a general contractor's license.

Lowrey says he also will be looking for opportunities outside of the service industry. "I'm interested in finding my next business in something that's a little bit less complicated," he says. "Our business has lots of moving parts."

Virtual mentors

David Lowrey's reading didn't stop with motivational lecturer Anthony Robbins.

Lowrey is a fan of the books of Brian Tracy, Robert Kiyosaki and others who have inspired American business leaders. Lowrey says he used the authors as mentors-from-afar when he couldn't find any he knew personally.

What has he learned from all of their traits?

Integrity is the most important quality of a successful business owner. "You've got to be someone that people trust," he says, "with their money, with their resources."

Lowrey told a youthful University of Tampa audience that there are role models to avoid as well. "Donald Trump, I think the guy sucks," Lowrey says. "I wouldn't want to emulate anything the guy does. He's very successful in business, but I don't admire the way he conducts himself personally."

Inspirational books on business get boring after a while. "There's only so much rah-rah you can take," says Lowrey, who also reads history and other subjects.

But he prefers the Robbins genre because he loves running a business. "You get to treat people the way you'd like to be treated," he says. "I get a great thrill out of helping my staff hit their goals. That's one of my goals in life, to get 20 people to become millionaires."