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Entrepreneur E.J. Ourso quickly learned the art of selling. As a young man, Mr. Ourso once sold chickens and garlic door-to-door and, between the ever-insouciant fowl and the debilitating perfume of the vampire-tonic, his desire to move inventory in a hurry escalated appreciably.
"Man, we had a scale you'd hang around your neck and it would hold chickens on each side," he recalls. "Those chickens would get all nervous and start vomiting on you and get diarrhea--it'd make you the world's best salesman in a hurry. I sold 700 chickens for two bits a pound."
Today, Mr. Ourso, 70, retains his infectious exuberance for life and for his once-tiny life insurance company, Security Plan. This year Security Plan attained one of Mr. Ourso's life-long goals when it reached $1 billion worth of life insurance in force.
"I never doubted that I'd reach that goal, he says. "The thing about goals is, you should set'em and don't tell anybody except maybe your spouse. Then you visualize it and go after it. Once you reach it, then you tell everybody about it."
At the end of June the company totalled $1,000,369,35--not bad for a man who once ate doughnuts and milk throughout college because it was the cheapest food available. The company now employs more than 1,000 people across Louisiana.
The Donaldsonville-based...