Tom Cousins answered my plea for advice and taught me hard business lessons

My mom always complained, “Our family is full of lawyers and doctors, but we don’t have one good businessperson.”

At 37, I tried to prove her wrong and launched a neighborhood newspaper group in Atlanta’s Virginia-Highland neighborhood called Atlanta 30306, named after its ZIP code.

We later expanded too quickly into Buckhead, Downtown and Sandy Springs. We soon neared bankruptcy. I remember one late night sitting in our downtown Flatiron Building office with my nephew, godson and CFO, John Waddy, trying to figure out where I could find money to make the next day’s payroll.

Waddy pointed to the new credit card terminal sitting on our advertising director’s desk. I slipped my American Express gold card through and typed in $10,000. Amazingly, it deposited. Waddy and I high-fived.

The next day, my mother offered her best business advice ever: “Call Tom Cousins,” she said. “He neared bankruptcy once but turned it around and became a huge success.”

Heeding my mother’s advice led to a business partnership

Tom Cousins died July 29 at 93. His legacy as CEO of Cousins Properties is written along the skyline of Atlanta and several other cities, but also on the fairways at East Lake Golf Club that he bought out of bankruptcy only later to host PGA’s Tour Championship for the past 20 years.

He used club membership fees to revitalize an adjacent public housing project that locals called “Little Vietnam” because of the gunshots heard there nearly every night.

Before hanging up the phone, Mom had one final piece of advice: “Don’t ask him for money. Just ask him for advice.”

I wrote a letter and mailed it with little hope he’d respond. The next day, his name appeared on my new caller ID device. “You probably don’t know this, but I love newspapers,” Cousins said. “Much to the dismay of my family investment office, I’ve bought 10 of them already. Come see me tomorrow at my house.”

We agreed to be 50-50 partners. As he shook my hand at his front door, he put his hand on my shoulder. “Now listen, I’ve got to turn you over to my private office guys. They hate newspapers and will beg me to not buy you. So, if their scrutiny gets unbearable, just call me and I’ll pull them off. But I’ve got to let them think I’m running this by them.”

The publication we nurtured continues on to this day

I did call him a few weeks later when the due diligence seemed excruciating. Cousins, always true to his word, closed the deal and saved our neighborhood newspapers. We were partners for four years until the 9-11 terrorist attacks froze the newspaper advertising industry and we hit air.

“This little paper just can’t support the both of us,” he told me. “Either you buy me out or I’ll buy you.”

My friend Charles Driebe counseled me: “You know what the Golden Rule is, don’t you: He who has the gold makes the rules. I’d sell.” I did.

Cousins later sold the papers to Wendy Binns, whom I’d hired as a salesperson right out of University of Virginia. Atlanta Intown is now on its fifth owner, Rough Draft’s Keith Pepper.

Cousins’s investment team confided early on that he bought one share in hundreds of public companies just so he could devour their annual reports. He was, as my mom said, the consummate businessman.

Near the end of our partnership, Cousins suggested we meet for breakfast. He pushed aside his plate and looked at me with that legendary earnest stare that had closed thousands of deals and opened even more relationships.