You might say that Bill Byrne makes good guesses.

Byrne is an Iowa native and Iowa State University graduate who moved to South Dakota in the 1970s because, as he told an interviewer more than 20 years ago, he woke up one night and decided to become a stockbroker and that’s where the search took him.

He wound up being the youngest manager of a New York Stock Exchange firm. His career also includes publishing and conducting business seminars. He is the author of the book “Habits of Wealth.”

Also back in the 1970s, Byrne and his wife would spend their Saturday nights “looking at franchises,” he told the Business Record recently.

The reason was simple. He started life as an Iowa farm boy, the oldest of seven children, and figured he’d have to become a business owner by starting from scratch.

He started in unknown territory: eat-on-the-fly Mexican food. Byrne hadn’t tasted so much as a taco at the time, but he had a hunch folks in the Midwest would take to the food.

“I knew that to get into business I would have to do it on the cheap because I started with nothing. It just happened to be food,” Byrne said.

In 1972, Byrne founded Taco Johns of Iowa Inc. On Feb. 19, 1973, he opened his first Taco John’s near Roosevelt High School. The restaurant has closed at that site and moved its operations to Ingersoll Avenue. It has several companions, with more scheduled to open over the next few months.

Over the last nearly 40 years, Byrne has worked with several notable Greater Des Moines commercial real estate brokers. For the last 18 years, he has worked with Bill Wright of Terrus Real Estate Group LLC. Wright picked up the assignment from Kurt Mumm, now head of NAI Ruhl & Ruhl Commercial Co. in West Des Moines.

Just to make the connections even more focused on Greater Des Moines, Terrus also operates as construction manager for Taco John’s of Iowa, with Kurt Moats leading that effort.

Taco John’s of Iowa now operates 16 restaurants in Iowa and it isn’t slowing down. In fact, life for Wright as a broker locating properties and for Moats as a construction manager is getting busier because Byrne and his partner Jeff Brands have bought the rights for CherryBerry self-serve frozen yogurt franchises in Iowa, Colorado, Michigan and Wyoming.

Byrne said he takes a “stair-step” approach to business growth, notes that his businesses are on a steep riser now. He is opening stand-alone CherryBerry shops and others that will stand side-by-side with Taco John’s.

“We’re the largest operator of the Taco John’s brand in America; this time next year, we’ll probably be the largest CherryBerry operator,” he said.