Entrepreneurs are often described as risk takers. That may be true, but Ted McMullan (MBA ’93) — who started a seniors care and housing network at 27 — wants you to know that risks are relative.
“I have tended to be a risk taker, but a risk taker who does a lot of homework,” McMullan said. “As an entrepreneur, if you focus and do your homework, you can minimize your risk. We’ve had a lot of large transactions that probably from the outside looked really, really risky. But by the time we got through our due diligence, it didn’t seem that scary.”
McMullan, who received his MBA with an emphasis in entrepreneurship from the University of Georgia Terry College of Business, started building a network of seniors housing and care facilities across the U.S. in the late 1990s. He returned to campus on March 24 to deliver the UGA Institute for Leadership Advancement’s inaugural lecture in the Shoukry Leadership Speaker Series.
McMullan created Covington Investments LLC, to provide working capital and to enhance business strategy for nonprofit and small-scale seniors housing and care facilities. While Covington is a for-profit venture, it is mission-driven — meaning that Covington works with nonprofit and professional organizations to ensure that Covington’s thousands of residents receive the care and respect they deserve.
McMullan’s decision to focus on seniors housing was as a result of childhood hours spent with his grandparents and his research for a business plan project to earn his MBA.
“We’re not in the widget business,” he told UGA students. “We’re doing something that’s fundamentally helping people. It’s a real mission and a ministry for us.”
McMullan learned the ropes of the seniors care and housing sector by taking a $30,000-a-year job at a long-term care network based in Cleveland, Tennessee. He had the lowest starting salary of anyone in his MBA class, but it was an opportunity to learn about the field he wanted to join. In four years, he toured 700 seniors facilities across the country. He helped apply for operating licenses in multiple states and learned the intricacies of funding and staffing.
“It was an incredible experience,” he said. “I was there for just under five years, and I feel like I got 10 years’ worth of experience or a PhD in seniors housing because my plate was so overloaded.”
McMullan lived in an apartment across the parking lot from his office and worked nearly all the time. That one-track focus on his career continued after launching Covington.
At 27, he didn’t have a house, debts, or a family to support — nothing to lose if Covington failed. That’s what made his big ideas seem doable.
“I was free and single, and I lived in an apartment,” he said. “What is the worst that could happen to me? They could take the apartment away. Early on, I was willing to take measured risk, and it just seemed natural.”
He told students he had no regrets about the days spent focusing on building his business, but he emphasized that lost time was one of those undiscussed risks of entrepreneurship.
He implored them to make the most of their time at UGA while they’re young. “Don’t phone it in,” he told them.
“I don’t have any regrets over the things I have done,” McMullan said. “All my regrets have been over the things I’ve not done. So, I would just tell you super-smart, beautiful, fabulous, young people: Be bold. Sleep is overrated. Get out there. . . you have to show up to knock it out of the park.”
The Shoukry Leadership Speaker Series is made possible by a gift from the family of Paul Shoukry (MAcc ’05), CEO and president of Raymond James Financial, Inc. Shoukry was a UGA ILA Leadership Scholar and credits a visiting speaker during his time at UGA as his inspiration to go into banking. He wanted today’s UGA students to have the same exposure to insightful and inspirational business leaders.