William Lavery Jr. always has a song playing in his head.

He's been around music all of his life, so it seemed only natural for him to one day own a company that is focused on music.

The 54-year-old has been bringing music to restaurants, retail stores and businesses in Augusta for 20 years. He owns nine Muzak LLC franchises and co-owns five others. He has roughly 25,000 accounts throughout the United States.

"We're what is called commercial sound. Anywhere from a doctor's office, grocery store to a fast food restaurant," Mr. Lavery said. "It's a great business. If you think about it, would you rather sell a copier or insurance policy or would you rather sell music? Everybody will talk to you about music."

Wayne Brown, the owner of WayneWorks, has known Mr. Lavery since 1989, when he hired him to provide Muzak services at his restaurants. The two businessmen have become friends over the years.

"At the time (in 1989), there were two companies providing it. I preferred to do business with Bill. He makes you very comfortable with him," Mr. Brown said. "Bill is probably the best salesperson I've ever met. He can sell seawater to Neptune. Not only does he understand what you want, if you ever have a problem, he's going to take care of it personally."

Mr. Lavery often calls off lunch appointments to uphold his standard of customer service to clients. Once, he cancelled lunch plans and immediately hopped in his car to drive to meet with a concerned customer in Birmingham, Ala.

"He prefers to do business in person, which is unusual these days," Mr. Brown said.

When Environmental Life Plantings owner Jack Blue met Mr. Lavery, he had only a handful of employees and a small office space behind Applebee's on Washington Road.

Now, Mr. Lavery has a 22,000-square-foot facility on Damascus Road and employs 75 people at his different franchise locations.

"He's grown his company tenfold since I've known him. He's a go-getter and likes to get bigger and better in the industry that he's in," Mr. Blue said.

Mr. Blue said his longtime friend is "pretty eclectic" in his musical tastes.

"I like everything from Dean Martin, country, rock, Motown and the Beatles. It's hard to put me in one area. The funny thing about it, I have no musical talent," Mr. Lavery said, laughing.

"Bill is definitely an encyclopedia of music," Mr. Brown said. "If you ask him who wrote or sang a song or anything about music, he's probably going to know it."

Rock 'n' roll

Mr. Lavery was born in Cleveland in 1953, where he lived with his parents, Bill and Carol, and three siblings, Louise, Lynn and Jimmy. He is the second of the four children.

His father, now deceased, was an entertainment facility manager for the Cleveland Arena, the Jacksonville Coliseum and the Macon Coliseum.

"There were always shows to go to. I've seen Elvis, the Beatles and all those kind of people growing up. I saw James Brown in 1961 when we moved to Florida. That's one of the first shows I ever saw at Jacksonville Coliseum," Mr. Lavery said.

The family moved to Jacksonville, Fla., when he was 6 years old. During concerts, his parents had to work in the building, so they would take him and his siblings to their seats, where they remained until the show was over.

His father's connections in the Northeast enabled him to bring a vast array of shows to the Jacksonville Coliseum, which was one of the first buildings of its type in the Southeast.

"Now, every city the size of Augusta has a building. But back then, very few buildings existed that held 8,000 to 10,000 people," Mr. Lavery explained.

His mother worked as a teacher while he was growing up. There was a teacher shortage when schools were integrated, so she went to teach in Macon's inner-city schools.

"She did that until we all went away to college, and then she went back to Emory and became a minister," Mr. Lavery said.

"There are people who get up every morning trying to figure out what they can do for other people. She's one of those kinds of people."

Today, his mother works at a retirement community in Florida.

There wasn't much discussion about whether Mr. Lavery was going to attend college -- it was expected. His family strongly believed in education.

"My mother's grandmother and her four sisters, which would have been back in the early 1900s, all five of those girls graduated from college, which was huge back then," he said.

Mr. Lavery enrolled in Georgia College in Milledgeville, where he majored in economics and management.

When he graduated, he took a job with the music licensing firm Broadcast Music Inc., known as BMI, and worked for 11 years in Kansas City, Atlanta and Charlotte.

"I licensed music for radio stations, night clubs, bowling alleys, motels and anywhere that played music," Mr. Lavery said.

After 11 years, he was vested in the company, and at only 32 years old, he had put in enough time to retire. During his work at BMI, he had called on several companies to license music, including Muzak franchises.

When he retired, he was still interested in Muzak, so he met with a franchise owner and started working with him in July 1986.

On Jan. 1, 1988, he bought the Muzak franchise in Augusta, which he named Carolina Georgia Sound Inc.

Muzak on demand

"The thing I liked about the business was that people seemed very relaxed and didn't seem to have a lot of pressure on them," Mr. Lavery said.

Until five years ago, Mr. Lavery had fewer than a dozen employees. When he entered the video camera business and started offering additional labor, though, his business grew rapidly.

Today, Carolina Georgia Sound Inc. has 35 employees. A new company, Focus Four, has 40 more. Focus Four owns Muzak franchises in Birmingham and Montgomery, Ala., Roanoke and Bristol, Va., and West Palm Beach, Fla.

Carolina Georgia Sound's music services stretch from Columbus, Ga., to Florence, S.C. Another company, Great Plains Sound & Technology, owns franchises in Nebraska, Oklahoma, Texas and Kansas.

His staff installs speakers, sound systems and cameras for residential and commercial clients. They also install televisions and drive-through technology for restaurants such as McDonald's.

"We probably do 10 installations a day on new accounts," Mr. Lavery said.

Tanya Sullivan, an account executive who joined the company this year, said her boss does not micromanage. Because he trusts people to do their jobs, his employees are loyal, she said.

"It's such a fun place to work. Bill is such a great guy, and he really cares about his employees. People want to work for him," Ms. Sullivan said. "If you work hard and have potential, he will move you up. He'd rather do that than go out and hire someone new. There's always potential for growth."

Mr. Lavery's wife, Catherine, is responsible for payroll and human resources at Georgia Carolina Sound.

Most of his managers are women.

"One thing I appreciate about women in business is that they will let you know where they stand. Men will sometimes go away and don't tell you anything when they're mad with you. I'd rather know," he said.

He said that if his employees can master an installation at one retail store, they can do the same at another store within the chain. It's important to build a reputation to help land new jobs, he said.

Muzak has landed P.F. Chang's, Wet Seal, Hollister, Abercrombie & Fitch and Kohl's as clients. His customers have a wide selection of musical play lists.

"There are 76 programs out there. The big thing now is a lot of people want their own programming for music," he explained.

Businesses can work with an audio architect to custom design their own music program. For instance, a steak house chain might prefer western music, while a restaurant with a tropical theme might prefer beach music.

Retail stores also can choose to download advertisements and messages to play on the store's programming.

"We have some of the best technology out there. Our music has always been top notch, but we're right at the top of our game when it comes to the ability to deliver music."

Answer man

Mr. Lavery has a difficult time putting a label on what he does everyday. He calls himself a troubleshooter.

"That's one thing I really enjoy about what I do. I don't have a typical day," he said. "When I'm here, I'm like the answer man. I have people asking me questions all day. I have a very open door policy, so I could be meeting with the pope or the president; my employees don't mind just walking in."

No matter where he might be, Mr. Lavery is always accessible by cell phone, even if he accidentally hangs up before the call is over.

"I haven't realized that I've done this, but apparently I'm really bad at ending conversations. I get done talking and just hang up on people. My wife, Catherine, says 'You don't even say goodbye.' "

He doesn't realize he's doing it because his mind tends to wander. He thinks his business partners probably named their new company, Focus Four, to poke fun at him.

"I can multitask pretty well, so I get done with one thought and I'm somewhere else," he said.

In his office, he has a large dry erase board where he keeps track of activity with his different companies.

Mr. Lavery said he works around the clock, especially with the addition of his sound and video services and that new company, Focus Four. He spends a lot of time on the road visiting clients.

"Work is very enjoyable to me. It's easy to come to work when you enjoy what you do," he said.

When it comes to the future, Mr. Lavery said his plans are up in the air.

"I don't have a plan. For years, I had plans, and we went past all of my plans and goals," he said.

When he started his business, Mr. Lavery had set a goal to have 500 accounts in Augusta. He's got 1,000, plus the 24,000 other accounts nationwide.

"My goals that I set for myself were not nearly as high as they could have been," he said. "I don't know if I had set higher goals where I would be today."

While many businesses are suffering in the tough economy, Mr. Lavery said that he has all the business he can handle.

"The economy is really good for us. We're very fortunate," he said.

Technology has changed over the years. While music was once fed through telephone lines, it has since evolved to radio station towers, satellite (analog and then digital) and the Internet.

"We're on our fourth music source in the 20 years I've been here," Mr. Lavery said. "I think probably in the future, we'll be doing a lot of the Internet-fed music."

Mr. Lavery admits that he is probably not the most technologically savvy person. His company doesn't have an official Web site.

"I'm not a big voicemail person. I'm actually not a big e-mail person," he said.

However, he has never allowed technology to intimidate him. Mr. Brown said they had a conversation 10 years ago about the future of satellite music. His friend was not worried about where the business was headed; instead, he was thinking ahead to new ventures, such as cameras or TV installations and even using the Internet.

"He was never concerned about technology making his business obsolete. He knew he would find a way around it, which he obviously has," Mr. Brown said.

Lately, Mr. Lavery has enjoyed volunteering as a motivational speaker. During his lectures, he talks about sales.

"I'm a salesperson. That's what I like to do," Mr. Lavery said. "When I go out and talk to people about sales, it's almost like therapy."

Coast to coast

Mr. Lavery has traveled to all 50 states with his sons William and Harrison.

He learned from his parents that it's important to travel and see new things, and he wanted to pass this value on to his children. Their family memories are preserved in a scrapbook.

He recalls a Willie Nelson song that refers to going to places "you've never been." This has become Mr. Lavery's motto.

On the bookshelf in his office, there are countless pictures of his family.

While the rest of his family is athletic, he sticks to fishing. He plays golf but admits that he's not very good.

"Catherine does triathlons. She gets up every morning at 5:30 and swims 3 miles, and then comes to work," he said.

His wife and sons have run alongside each other at the Peachtree Road Race.

Mr. Brown travels with his friend on fishing trips to Florida's Lake Okeechobee once a year for bass fishing. They're usually part of a group of about 10-14 other fishermen.

"He's always a joy to be with on these trips," he said.

Mr. Blue meets with his friend several times a week for lunch or after work. They take trips together to Hilton Head, S.C., where Mr. Blue owns a business. He said Mr. Lavery has always taken care of his audio and video needs. In return, Mr. Blue trades his landscaping services.

"We kind of trade our professions with each other. We both get a sentimental reward from it," Mr. Blue said. "They say if you have one or two good friends, then you're very lucky. I think that he's one of these kind."

Reach LaTina Emerson at (706) 823-3227 or latina.emerson@augustachronicle.com.