Darien, Connecticut, United States
Ed is the founder of four businesses and is currently running Blue Sunsets LLC, a real estate and angel investment firm. He bootstrapped his first business, United Systems Integrators (USI) Corporation, a corporate real estate outsourcing firm and grew it into an Inc. 500 company. In 2001, Ed earned Entrepreneur of the Year honors from Ernst & Young. In 2005 he sold USI to Johnson Controls, a Fortune 100 company, and at that point, became CEO of JEI's Global Workplace Business for the Americas. Prior to USI, McLaughlin was a partner at Trammell Crow Company, a regional executive at Hewlett-Packard, and a marketing representative in IBM’s Data Processing Division. A member of the Board of Governors for Tufts Medical Center, McLaughlin founded its David E. Wazer Breast Cancer Research Fund. He graduated from the College of the Holy Cross, where he is a member of the Board of Trustees. Active in philanthropy, McLaughlin lives with his wife in Connecticut and has three adult children.
Recently published a book on entrepreneurship, "The Purpose Is Profit: The Truth about Starting and Building Your Own Business," with Wyn Lydecker. The goal of The Purpose Is Profit is to improve entrepreneurial success by centering the entrepreneur on the generation of profit from the get-go. Unlike visionary “change the world” books, The Purpose is Profit uses true story to describe the mental struggle to startup, the funding challenge to bootstrap, lessons learned from bad decisions, the scaling process to Inc.500, and the sale to Fortune 100 – a realistic exposé of what worked and what didn’t. "The Purpose Is Profit" (Greenleaf Book Group) is available in hardback or eBook at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Indiebound, 800CEOread, and Books-a-Million. It is also available at 150 airport bookstores. Learn more at www.thepurposeisprofit.com/order Read our blog at: http://thepurposeisprofit.com/blog/
Founded Blue Sunsets LLC to make angel investments in start-ups and small growth businesses. In addition to angel investing, Blue Sunsets develops residential real estate and provides strategic consulting for companies in transition. For more information: www.bluesunsets.com
After the sale of USI Companies to Johnson Controls in June 2005, led the integration, strategy and management of the newly combined business for the Americas.
Founded Sequentra Solutions as a Software as a Service (SaaS) platform to manage real estate portfolios for corporations and institutions. Acquired by Johnson Controls in 2005.
USI Companies Inc (USI) was founded in 1991 to provide comprehensive real estate outsourcing services to corporations and institutions. USI clients included Boeing, Computer Sciences Corporation, T-Mobile, Toshiba America and United Technologies. Acquired by Johnson Controls in 2005.