Magic Johnson: Over Deliver

Earvin (Magic) Johnson, pride of Lansing Everett High School, basketball legend with the Michigan State Spartans and Los Angeles Lakers and now business tycoon, wants to build a movie theater complex in Detroit — and perhaps buy and grow a couple Michigan businesses with a new $500-million private equity fund he’s about to launch.

Johnson, 47, already owns four Starbucks coffee shops in Detroit and one in East Lansing, but that’s just a small portion of his growing empire of 110 Starbucks, six movie theater complexes, 31 Burger King restaurants, a dozen 24-Hour Fitness centers and nearly $1 billion worth of real estate projects in urban markets across the country.

Quotes:

“I tried to put a theater in Detroit when Dennis Archer was mayor,” Johnson told me Thursday, “but there was confusion over where to put the casino location then. I’ve been talking to Mayor Kilpatrick; he’d like to see a cineplex downtown.”

“I had gone out and bought everything that I liked,” he said, “not what the customers liked.”

“Business is about outworking everybody else, I hire no clock-watchers. To be successful, you must over-deliver, because in today’s business world just delivering isn’t good enough.”

“But now I love the wheeling and dealing, touching communities, putting 25,000 minorities to work in urban America. That’s better than owning a team, for now.”