John Morgan, founder of the US personal-injury firm Morgan & Morgan, tells Ed Mylett that “luck” in business is often manufactured through planning and repetition, using examples from sport and gambling to argue that preparation creates “practice luck”. He describes taking “moonshots” alongside smaller “bullets before bombs” experiments, and offers a blunt view of why many small businesses fail, repeatedly stressing location, capitalisation and execution.
Morgan gives several concrete business claims, including that Morgan & Morgan will spend $600m on advertising this year, compared with a $100,000 budget in the firm’s early days, and says he scaled by reinvesting profits rather than extracting them for lifestyle purchases. He also discusses hiring practices, endorsing personality testing to avoid mismatches and to reduce the cost of bad hires.
On technology, Morgan says AI is not overhyped, claims he has hired an expensive ex-Amazon AI specialist to evaluate tools, and says his firm is already trialling AI in call-centre operations handling millions of calls annually. He contrasts that approach with his caution about crypto, which he says he does not understand well enough to invest in.
The conversation also touches on Morgan’s other ventures, including a Guy Fieri-linked entertainment concept and his crime museum, where he claims to own and display vehicles and artefacts connected to famous American criminal cases.
John Morgan says he has launched a new entertainment concept, Downtown Flavor Town, in partnership with Guy Fieri. He describes it as a redemption-arcade venue with food, drink and bowling, similar to Dave & Buster’s. He claims his Myrtle Beach site took $122,000 in a single day.
Read this moment →