Welcome to another episode of the Main Street Business Podcast. I am excited today to welcome

Gary Kousen as serial entrepreneur, investor, author, mentor, and co-founder of GameStop.

Gary was also the co-founder of Lurie Mercierge Cosmetics and served for 13 years as the CEO of the private equity firm, TPG, and a transformative

stint as the CEO of Kinko's, now FedEx. Today, he continues to advise companies large and small

and leave his indelible mark on the business world through his visionary leadership. We are so

lucky to have him as a guest here on the Main Street Business Podcast.

Well, Gary, what an honor to have you here with us. This is truly an honor because sometimes

I feel like I'm that Main Street small business owner and we look up to the serial entrepreneur

like you who's done it all, gone from small to big and everywhere in between

and so that's very very interesting to the main street small business owner and it's an honor to

have you here with us thank you so much for coming well thank you for having me okay well i you know

on that note i've been dying to ask this question I want to know when you knew it in your bones

that you were an entrepreneur. Like what was that small business experience? Was it the lemonade stand?

I don't know. What was it that was that seminal moment? That's an interesting question because

my partner and I came at GameStop completely differently than entrepreneurs tend to come at things. We came to it as a result of very

deep analysis. My partner co-founder was a partner at Bain. He had replanted himself in the Silicon

Valley and had some video game publishers at the dawn of the video game era, helping them

figure out how to grow their business. At the same time,

I was pursuing a career in department store retailing and had come to the point of view that

specialty stores were taking the lunch of department stores. And I did some very detailed

analysis and presenting it to the parent company and saying we, and with some answers,

I thought we might want to follow. So Jim came to town, came into Dallas. He was on his way to do

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