Chapter 43

Beep, beep, beep, and I was up with only three beeps. The four of us were up and quickly dressed to work out. We did the treadmills and then used either weights or the Nautilus positions. I was anxious to get to work today so I could plan next week and begin putting together the presentation that I knew would be required.

While we were showering and dressing, Jules said, "You know that little sitting room across from the Saloon? I'd like to turn that into a suite for Willy's mother. It will be a little smaller than the suite Hideki and Nobuko have on the first floor, but it should be perfect for an older woman. We can house the care staff for her in the staff wing. There is even a small bathroom in the one corner that we can enlarge and a huge linen closet and pantry in the other corner for her clothes closet. What do you think, Brad?"

"I think that's a great idea. Make what modifications you want and get her moved. That will allow Willy to know her mother is being taken care of."

I advised the girls while we were eating breakfast. "There are some major events happening with Mooney that I'll be involved with. You know about San Jose, and that San Antonio is opening in a couple of months. We'll be opening a second office here in the LA area and we will be buying land and building condominiums in addition to that. This is going to be a huge venture for the company that will be watched by the whole country. Our example will be followed in all the cities where we have offices if this works here. I'm telling you this so you will understand if I'm distracted sometimes. I never want to ignore you, and hope I don't. You'll have to come with me if we don't get to spend enough time with each other. I'm not sure whether I'm excited, scared, or just crazed from the amount of effort it will require to get all these entities to work."

Jules said, "I know that it's important for a man to be busy and to work at what he knows best, but be aware, Brad my – or rather, our – Love, we really don't have to work ever again with the value of our new estate. We could spend our time going back and forth between LA and Hawaii. We could all learn to be golfers. I could set you up with your own sales office on the islands so that you could be busy and we'll all live happily ever after."

"All true, Jules and Katie, but we have to be ready for our children in another eight plus months. I want the openings of the two offices to be successful and the initial construction of the city center condo units to be well on its way. The outlying condo clusters should be selling by then as well. I'm sure that you're like I am and are on pins and needles while waiting for the babies."

I think I explained what was happening in my life at this time, but I'm sure that Jules could have spent the same amount of time explaining what her strategies were for the next six or so months. I had this thought that we might be busier than we ever considered we could be.

Connie beat me into the office that morning, and I was sure she was working on the proposals I wanted. Ken came rolling into my office with Alec on his lap, her loose skirt flying up to show she wasn't wearing any knickers today. The two were excited to show me what they had created last night.

Alec put one of their laptops on my conference table and told me to watch.

The presentation began by showing picture after picture of homes crammed into areas you wouldn't believe. It then showed our developments with highway access, and a time delay video on fast forward of someone getting into a city center office with the start and ending times shown to emphasize how much time people are willing to give to have something of their own.

The presentation kept coming back to show drawings of a high-rise overlooking the downtown and government center, then a photo of the condemned buildings, followed by drawings of three and four-story high-end condo buildings with a central garage and some of the cluster condos with four to six units each.

I told Alec and Ken, "That is unbelievably good. You two are invaluable."

Alec said, "Good, I want to be involved in the high-rise and high-end small condo buildings. There is so much money to make within a very small area. I know we'll still be managing our customers, but having hundreds of customers in a single building is an awesome prospect."

Ken said, "I have a couple of engineering friends I spoke with last night who are going to put together some estimates for the existing buildings teardown. They are some real green freaks who always want to reuse everything. They think we can save up to thirty percent on materials if we correctly salvage the old buildings. We could build an advertising campaign based on how green our building is, and the amount of materials reused instead of stripping the land of valuable raw minerals."

Alec chuckled and said, "Those geeks would be trying to reuse toilet paper if you listen to them."

Connie joined the early morning conversation by laying several sheets of paper in front of me. She said, "Okay, here are some cost estimates of a twenty-five-story building in that area. They don't include the individual office build-outs for most of them, but one is very interesting in that it shows offices for the bottom fifteen floors, and residential penthouse apartments for the top ten floors. I'll bet we can use that one for a good guide. We can get some valuable information if we were to talk to the architects, engineers, and construction superintendents for that building. Have Julio find him and use him for some of our estimates."

"This is perfect, Connie, now to put this all together for a quick presentation." I was gathering the papers she laid out.

Ken said, "Let my group put your presentation together real quick. They love stuff like this. We have a bunch of real video and presentation buffs who will have you something by noon."

"Do it, Ken. I'd love to send it to the home office so that they can do some daydreaming over the weekend."

My office was suddenly empty, except for Donte and Georgia. Kelly and Joan were still involved in the morning tour. Georgia said, "The daily survey of the offices and sales volume is complete, and it isn't because there wasn't any. It's because of the new reporting system Connie developed. I get the information already compiled, and just tuck the data into the report you want. We know what everyone is doing by nine, or in this case by eight-thirty, if the offices do their dailies early."

I thought to myself that maybe there was a way to get this place operating as smoothly as the Florida region. I knew better, but it was a nice dream.

Two young ladies walked into my office and were looking around. Georgia was alarmed, and asked, "May I help you?"

The one I recognized as the receptionist from Oakland said, "I don't see a bunch of eligible men running around here. There are far too many good-looking women here for us, Cuz. We should probably forget this and go back to man hunting at home."

The second female said, "I'm willing to share, so maybe we could use some of the existing male talent to keep us happy for a while."

I was standing and said to Georgia, "The taller of the two is Serena Foxworth also known as Chica, and the cute one with the dimples is Danielle Foxworth, or Danny. Both were not supposed to be here until Monday, but they are two eager women as you can see."

Danny said, "Say it right, two eager 'beavers'."

Kelly and Joan had just returned from their morning tour and were standing at the door listening. Kelly knew Danny, and said, "So the Foxworth clan is already here to disrupt our normal operation. Both of you come with me for a tour to meet everyone. You'll love all the crazies we have, although they're not even close to what you have in the Oakland office."

My phone rang, and I answered with the usual 'Johnson'.

"Oh, God, I'm sorry, Brad. The two were a cloud of dust and out of here as soon as I told them you said to come. I've heard they are already there in LA. Are they already in the office?"

"They're here, Andy. Kelly and Joan have them on a tour to meet everyone right now. I'm sure they'll work out and everyone will get along. You know I love the way your family cuts up and has fun, so they should have a good time with all the people here who are just begging for some fun at this office."

"I'm really sorry, Brad. I should have known they were better prepared for this than I was. My niece is already at the reception desk and seems to know what she's doing. The other saleswoman showed up this morning and commandeered her cousin's prime desk and has already brought two listings in. Make sure you have Chica demonstrate the Foxworth method of getting listings. Call me if they are too much trouble for you and I'll take them back as janitors or something."

I could tell Andy was very upset. I really did sympathize with him because of the family's brashness. Mooney West Coast needs even more of this Foxworth influence.

"They'll be fine, Andy. Come to visit if you miss them too much."

"Riiiiiight, you won't have to worry about visitors, their mothers, aunts, and older cousins are probably all planning an invasion as we speak. Dial 911 and run when you see them." Andy hung up with that.

I had another call that was from Jules. "Your two new assistants from Oakland called to see if I would rent them my apartment. I told them the place was ready for residents, but that they needed to be responsible for it. We came to an agreement on money, and then their relatives called to meet me at the apartment. Those folks are a trip. I spent an hour laughing, but they were willing to pay what I thought was fair."

"Good, that means the two will be settled by Monday and ready to go to work. I could use one more Assistant, but should probably leave that position open in case someone interesting surfaces. Thanks for working with the parents. This should be a great relationship. Both girls have talents our people here can learn from."

I still had to make my plans for San Antonio, Austin, and the other Texas offices. I typed a loose schedule that would take care of most of the week. I think I was going to have to beg off playing pool either on Monday or Thursday, or possibly even both this next week. I needed to bring the Austin Manager with me and get him set up to begin forming his office. I gave him a call and asked him to allow his Assistant to run the office this coming week and plan to accompany me while interviewing potential Sales Managers and other staff in San Antonio. We were initially going to be without inventory homes, but the properties had all the utilities and infrastructure completed. We might be able to get a couple of models started if we were lucky. I told the man, "You're going to have a ton of questions, so write them all down, and make a notebook out of it. Go through your office and look at each function so that you know what you'll have to recreate. Keep in mind that every good person we find will probably have other people who they would like to work with."

I talked to the man about how his wife would take this promotion. He said she is already dancing around because it could mean she doesn't have to go back to work and have to leave their new baby with daycare. I told the man what his new salary would be and that his bonus money would double what he had been making if he did the job right. He was ecstatic.

His big task was going to be to find something temporary for living quarters while he moves to San Antonio and starts his office. The company is good about assisting a family's move since this was an important step for the company and the new Manager. That ice was broken so that the man can begin to let go of Austin and focus on his new responsibilities.

I studied the city of San Antonio and found that it had over a half million people more than Austin and was growing rapidly. This city was very vibrant with business production and tax revenue growing almost as fast as Houston. The city's gross production product was more than double Austin's, but it wasn't a government center so it didn't have that steady source of revenue to rely on. Several major companies had recently opened manufacturing facilities in and around San Antonio, which means that the area's production would increase that much more. The good thing was San Antonio was only seventy-five miles from Austin. That's commuting distance in Texas.

I made a list of the departments we would need to staff, with what the time line would be before they had to be running. All the departments actually had to begin performing when the first sale occurred. It was back to 'following the sale'. I bought Subways for everyone and then took Kelly, Joan, Chica, and Danny to Johnny's. The hostess harassed me about not having been in, but Kelly and Joan defended me by telling her that I had been on my honeymoon.

My topic of conversation was to emphasize that we were going to be very busy for the next four to six months and then on into a full year from now. I may send one of you to San Antonio to be an Assistant there, but I think I need to keep you around for the offices here. "You two Foxworth ladies are to learn all facets of being a Mooney Manager. Learn from Kelly and Joan. I've been making the new people grow up fast here, and have sent green people to offices for training and hope to get good managers back. Learn my rules. Work and live them. All rules can be bent a little, but you need to stay within what and how I want my offices to run."

Back at the office, I called home to advise the girls that I wouldn't be able to play pool Monday, and possibly not on Thursday. Katie thought she could handle that and would talk to my Monday night Captain. I called the pilot and told him I wanted to go to San Antonio Sunday evening. We would be in San Antonio at least through Tuesday, and possibly longer. We would try to get to the other Texas offices and New Orleans before coming home.

Ken came rolling into my office with four of his men. He handed me a DVD and said to turn my end monitor around and make sure the video played there.

The guys had continued with the idea of a streaming presentation in movie form. Music played and a deep baritone voice began narrating the process ideas of building a high-rise condo surrounded by other high-end condos. There would be flashes of spreadsheets for various items such as the clearing of the buildings. A number came up in bold figures on the spreadsheet and continued to increase in size until you knew that was the estimated cost of the teardown.

Pictures of several large office buildings including the one with the penthouses on the upper floors then streamed. Numbers were displayed again, showing the cost to build on a square foot basis this time.

There was a picture of a serene forest with a peaceful interlude playing while a soft female voice told the story of how whoever tore the building down could probably salvage up to thirty percent of those materials and reuse them to build the buildings we were planning, therefore saving millions in natural resources. There were flashes of the condemned buildings, salvage operations, and huge equipment tearing buildings down, and then back to the peaceful forest.

It went back to the baritone voice who described how this high-rise condo would be a valuable city asset because it would assist in reducing pollution and save millions of gallons of fuel. It ended with the man saying, "This is just an estimate for the Center City project, but Mooney could be the recipient of close to a billion dollars in profit from just this one project. The company would be applauded for creating jobs for many, and for using valuable land to create enhanced living quarters all while helping save the environment."

There was music that went to a crescendo before the screen went blank. The words 'You decide' came up and stayed there. I had chills running up and down my neck. I turned to the men and said, "I'll kiss all your asses, but let me see if I can send this to the home office using the drop box."

I logged on and loaded the DVD and sent it to the utility. I called Dan and told him to look in the company drop box folder for something new. It should be copied to the site within the next couple of minutes.

Turning to the men standing there, "What is really good about that video presentation is that it can be modified to present with our bid as well as when we are begging for permits after we take the profit information off."

Ken said, "The County has gone with you on just about everything so far, and you already have a rep for not trying to get anything past the inspectors. Julio has asked for permit modifications every time he's had to change something. The Commissioners will hear this and it might help. The dollars and cents will have to be on target, but I think we're going to be willing to pay more for the property because we have a plan. I wasn't all that excited about this initially, but I want to get at it now. We still need to create some unique exteriors for the high-rise and the other high-end condos."

I blew smoke up their butts for another five minutes, and before Ken left, he said, "We already have six different configurations for the brick and frame condo clusters you're planning. We just have to figure on how plush we want the property. Think about it and we'll be e-mailing you our design concepts while you're on the road next week. You might keep an eye out for properties in some of those other cities which might be suitable for condo developments, too, as we're putting a lot of features in these designs which will be catnip for local governments but still profitable for Mooney."