If at first you succeed, try again.

• Position: Career of stockbroker Stuart Vaughn

Winston-Salem native Stuart Vaughn has spent his career bucking the conventional wisdom that you can't simultaneously manage brokerage offices and sell effectively.

While helping develop two brokerage networks, the Davidson College graduate became one of the state's most successful brokers.

After a stint in the Winston office of Alex. Brown & Sons, Vaughn and partners Don McMillion and Ed Crawford bought Durham-based First Securities Co. in 1968. Four years later, they sold the company to Richmond, Va.-based Wheat Securities Inc. (McMillion later left to form his own investment management company in Greensboro, while Crawford remains with Wheat.)

Over the next 15 years, as Vaughn helped build Wheat First Securities into a statewide player with 10 offices, he saw his own role diminishing. So in January 1988 he left to become the first North Carolina employee of Scott & Stringfellow, another Richmond brokerage that hadn't kept pace with its more aggressive rival. "Wheat was getting pretty big, and I wanted to get more involved in building up something new again," he says.

Now, five years later, Scott & Stringfellow has eight offices and 45 brokers in the state, some of the growth stemming from acquisitions of Independence...