Chapter 75

Waking up somewhere different is always disconcerting. This was even more so as Janice was slowly moving up and down on me. I looked at the beautiful brunette with the rounded tummy as she shivered through a delicious climax every few strokes. Janice was shuddering through another orgasmic experience by the time that I had put where I was and who I was doing what with together.

Danny replaced me in Janice when I had expelled all the juice that I had stored, and he was busily sliding in and out while attempting to capture the intensity of our lovemaking. This had to be a strange tableau as the married woman wanted to continue to be pummeled and stroked into yet another great climax. Janice continued to passionately kiss me while her husband was stroking deep inside her from behind while kissing her on the neck and ear.

The three of us rolled to our sides and we two males gave Janice the correct loving tribute that we were in awe of the small bloated woman who was bragging on her ability to grow three new lives inside her.

Janice was playing with the three women I had brought with me, attempting to extract any juices her husband might have left behind by the time we were all awake and enjoying each other’s kisses. I think that the Foxworth girls had a plan to teach all the younger ones how to create a loving atmosphere. I would have believed just about anything about them at that moment.

My three women continued to kiss and stimulate me until my body gave up one last emission. Thank goodness that little Brad decided to lay down on the job and hide between my legs.

Mitsi and June were happy to have helped get the continuing lovemaking party to a happy glow with enough special smiles as they pushed toward the success of waking and getting a new day started.

June was sitting cross-legged beside me. She was gathering some of the juices that I had left in her and kissing it off her fingers. The little pixie said to Janice, “My sisters and I are now Brad’s wives and love to give him all the loving that he can handle. We like to give him someone extra like you too.”

I thought that Janice and Danny were going to bust a gut trying to keep from laughing. Janice hugged the diminutive June and kissed her. The former Foxworth said, “You ladies are special to Brad for making sure that he has enjoyed his time with me. I like to give my husband, Danny, that same benefit. He was very excited to have two cute little girls.”

Danny said, “Okay, everyone, we need to get going this morning. I have to be at the car store and I know that Janice has an office and region to run. Let’s get going.”

Everyone was ready to have some breakfast and get to work within thirty minutes. Janice spent a few minutes mothering her little ones to let them know that she was going to come home early this afternoon. Janice’s sister gathered the kids to her so that they never felt their mother’s emotional departure.

Janice told me that I should coordinate with the home office before I go into the Northern Midwest Region on the way to the office. I wanted to make sure that I talked to the Regional Manager for the Chicago area that had four offices. I had reviewed the sales and activity and only found that they were not promoting their developments as much as I thought they should.

I called the home office to talk to Dot. “Hey there, top-heavy, what do I need to know before I jump into the Chicago Region. They don’t seem to be selling from our developments, but do sell a lot of listings every week and month. Tell me what I’m missing.”

Dot said, “Mika was up there and was planning to spend a few days there, but came back the evening she went. Talk to her because she never wrote up any form of report. Let me transfer you.”

“Mika, this is Brad. I’m in Overland Park about to go to Chicago to see why we can’t sell more of our development homes. I understand that you were there but abruptly left. What’s the deal?”

Mika let out a big sigh and said, “How about coming in and planning your attack on the offices. I won’t restrict you, but I want to give you input where I’ve been advised of situations. Fly here and we’ll have a great working lunch and work on your schedule with what I know. I’ll have the girls get you and your traveling staff a good hotel room so we can either continue working on a schedule tomorrow morning or you can proceed to your next stop.”

“Sounds like a plan, Mika. I’ll be at the airport in a little over an hour. Let me use a company car and even a driver to cut costs.”

Mika said, “I’ve seen how you’re having your people ferry you between the airport and offices. Pretty smart.”

“We’ll be landing in the private aircraft area, so have someone meet us. Find a good place for my three-person aircrew, and remember that I’m traveling with my secretary and two bodyguards. You don’t have to pay for them, they don’t take up any extra room.”

Mika laughed at that and said, “You have everyone within the company either jealous of you, your women, or clamoring to be part of your traveling crew. Get here and we’ll work on how to handle some of the Regions.”

I used the flight time to Indy to talk to Georgia and Kelly back in LA. Kelly said that she had Conestoga doing a follow-up visit to San Diego to give her experience at other locations. I had to ask, “Don’t you think that you might be pushing Conestoga a little fast? I know that we’re both thinking she could go into one of the new offices, but she will only have about nine months in assistant management by the time the offices open.”

Kelly told me, “You didn’t give me much more time than that, and you were constantly pushing me into tougher and tougher situations. I know that you were standing over my shoulder, but you kept scaring me to death with each new situation.”

Kelly took a breath, then said, “All of your offices are doing what they are supposed to be doing at this moment. Rebecca is teaching Yori about her office, and she will be relieving Sheila to work with Danny in a week.”

There was a noticeable pause before Kelly said, “I didn’t catch it in time, but Chica went on a multiple listing call and ended up committing to a ten million dollar purchase of a large condominium complex that is in the initial building stage. Chica and Danni think the location is great, and the basic construction is acceptable, but the general appearance sucks. Ken is working on a design to enhance the buildings but that is going to extend the prep time before marketing by another two months. We have to buy some adjoining property for a recreation area as it wasn’t planned into the original. The property next to this isn’t that expensive and could be a couple of golf courses with a nice clubhouse. We know how to make a country club condo work.”

“Okay, Kelly, write up the two deals and forward them to all the partners. I’ll be in Indy shortly, so the faster you get that info out, the faster I can field questions. What do you hear from the other offices?”

“You’re fine, Boss. All your Office and Regional Managers are busting their asses to beat each other in total sales. I don’t think any office will ever beat this one. The Hollywood office had three hundred and twenty sales last week. The North LA office had two hundred and forty. The total Foxworth sales was two hundred and twelve. The best part is that the total is busted up between inventory, and custom sales, along with listings. Do you know that the total sales of just these three offices is almost two billion?”

That choked me up. I had to tell Kelly that I would talk to her later.

Holy shit, two billion in sales just from our three LA office group. I was still in shock when we were brought to the front door of the Mooney building.

Three of Dot’s staff were waiting for us and immediately hustled us past the receptionist and into an elevator. The two girls were given desks with a sightline to Dorothy, and I was shown into Mika’s office. Mika came from behind her desk to give me a hug and had Debbie and I sit at her conference table. As we were sitting, Mika said to me, “You should be named ‘Bill’ and not ‘Brad’. Wild Brad doesn’t have the appropriate ring to it.”

Mika laid a stack of files down and pointed at them. “There’s nothing really wrong with the operations up there, but the Regional is a former Century 21 guy who lives and dies with listings. The man has never mentally converted to selling custom homes. That keeps him busy, but also limits our profits because we never get the higher percentage from inventory and custom home sales. He can’t sell many inventory homes as he doesn’t have but a few in each market. He just brushed my suggestions aside and kept telling me that I wasn’t in his market, so I didn’t know what I was talking about when I tried to convince him of the increased profits from development homes.”

I told Mika, “Sounds like the manager in Orlando who had the same attitude. I brought his Assistant into Tampa and trained him to sell nothing but custom and inventory homes. It took the Assistant a month to realize that the Orlando office was missing some major sales. I gave the guy a separate sales group and used the ad budget for developments to promote their inventory and custom homes. The Construction Super had to get staffed up to build more inventory homes and to keep up with the custom home sales right away. The Office Manager saw how the development sales were bringing in a higher profit margin and began doing business the way that I wanted it to be done. I stole the Assistant who is now a Regional. Do you have good dossiers on the Assistants up there? We will take one from each office and send them to Hollywood, Reno, Dallas, and Tampa. We’ll keep in touch with those managers, and then begin building development sales. You’ll get some cooperation as soon as the Assistants start bringing in higher bonus money than the manager. We’ll go through their advertising folders if you have them and decide how we want to ramp up development advertising.”

I read each office file and picked out the Assistants who I wanted to retrain. I would fly up there and then go through each office, pulling Assistants aside for additional training. The Office Manager couldn’t bitch too much about that. Debbie was sending E-mails back to LA to get lists and information on Assistants in the Chicago Region.

Mika had Ken and Kurt meet with me in their conference room so that we could go over the offices in the other parts of the country. There were no significant situations that I needed to attend to, but Ken said that he and Kurt were going to visit with the offices and Regionals in each area and do a supervisory visit the way I did. I had to keep telling them to be gentle as most of these people had not had close supervision for a long while.

I suggested, “Let this first visit be to analyze the offices, their procedures, their personnel, advertising, and look for the sales’ smooth flow. Get all the facts, then begin to move them toward more productivity in our higher profit areas. Suggest that the managers begin looking for condo opportunities since we’ve learned that we can move multiple units within an area at an even higher profit margin. File reports so that all of us can go into any office to be supportive and help make good suggestions and decisions. The object is to increase sales and higher profits. We will see a great surge in profitability and enthusiasm if all the partners do this.”

I flew to Chicago to begin my introduction to the Regional after spending an evening having a lavish dinner with the partners. The man was high-energy, but was all “old fashioned” real estate. Get listing, sell listings, hunt for more listings. The man thought that it was a great idea for me to steal an Assistant from each office to send them to various offices for additional training. We worked out an area in each office where the Assistant could set up a separate development sales office. I privately spoke with each of the Assistants to make sure that they had knowledge of what Mooney did to make money. None of them realized that Mooney’s presence in the industry was about higher-end developments. These men were ready to progress with the exception that they didn’t know the company’s goals.

The one thing that I noticed was the avoidance of condominiums. We only had a few listings of existing condos for resale. I had each office manager give me a tour of their primary selling area to get an idea of the density and where condominiums were now built and available. We looked at those offered and I cringed over the lack of design difference from the usual cliff dweller apartments. None offered interior designers and architects to make them something special to the owner.

I discussed condominiums with the Regional when I was back at his office, and he obviously was against them. I offered him and his other three office managers a trip out west to get a look at what we were doing with condos and the profit that we were experiencing from them.

The primary Regional in Chicago was not interested at first until I told him, “Your four office area should be producing nearly a billion dollars a week in sales. You’re only producing about a quarter to half of that. You have a heavy fallout rate because you’re only dealing with resales. The buyers are usually better qualified to buy our development property homes. Let me show you and your office managers how my Hollywood office does it. I’ve looked at your models and inventory homes and know that they could be spruced up to be attractive. Let me talk to your construction supervisor before you visit me in LA. Open your mind and let’s have some fun. This may be teaching old dogs new tricks, but it will be all the old dogs getting doggy snacks.”