Chapter 5

Wednesday, August 8, 2029...

Since purchasing our office building back in February, we have all been very busy.

On a personal level, I found the housekeeping staff for my home through the Thomas Domestic Agency. The security company I hired to provide security guards, Clyde Protective Services, also provided technicians who evaluated the security needs of my home and property. They suggested several upgrades, which I approved. In addition to relocating my current security equipment from the house to the Carriage House, their technicians installed the equipment necessary for upgrading my property’s security.

I interviewed Gary Huxx for the position of Lead Bodyguard, and hired the Huxx Security Agency to provide me with twenty-four seven security. To meet my needs, Gary had to hire several bodyguards to assist him. So far, he and his people have done an outstanding job of being there when I needed security. No, I didn’t have major problems. It was mainly the aggressive media representatives and autograph hunters.

On a business level, I had entered into three General Partnerships with one partner in each Partnership. My three partners were Steve, Karen, and Mary. In each of the Partnerships, I provided the funding to set up an LLC, which Steve, Karen, and Mary would publicly appear to own. In return for the funding, I received fifty-one percent ownership of each Partnership. In return for the time and effort managing their LLC, my partners received forty-nine percent ownership of the Partnership. Due to the General Partnerships owning the LLCs, I actually had controlling interest in each LLC. Mary and I were on the Board of Directors for The Nobel Writing Group, Steve and I were on the Board of Directors for The Rattler, and Karen and I would be on the Board of Directors for The Scorpion once it became a registered company. The way we set up the Partnerships, Steve, Karen, and Mary would take a draw on their Partnership’s future profits, rather than a salary.

I, or perhaps I should say SIMC, created The Simmons Property Investment, LLC. It would handle my investments and handle the purchase and management of the properties I will buy and it would manage the properties of our future clients. We almost immediately started using the acronym SPI, pronounced as ‘spy’, when referring to the LLC.

During our celebratory dinner last January, I asked Jan and Steve to recommend someone to manage SPI. They both recommended their personal Property Management Consultant, Missus Margie Crespo.

Margie had worked as a Property Management Consultant for close to twelve years at the same property management company. She had experience managing both residential and commercial properties. The owner of her firm had been promising to promote her to the position of Vice President of the Residential Properties Management department for more than two years. Two months prior to Jan and Steve suggesting I talk with her, the Vice President of her department resigned, and the owner filled the opening with his daughter; who had less than a year of experience in managing properties. Margie had been tasked with training her boss’s daughter for the new position. Needless to say, Margie happily accepted the position I offered her back in February.

One of the questions that came up during our interview was could Margie hire her former firm’s employees. I consulted with Vic to get that resolved. Vic explained Employee Raiding to Marie and me during a telephone conference. He said that it was illegal in California if a company hires another company’s employees with the intent of putting the company out of business; otherwise it was legal. Vic told us that it would be best to not ask a former coworker to apply for a job with SPI. She should let them apply for a position. He also told her to not contact any of her former employer’s clients. Vic went on to suggest an aggressive advertising campaign and highly competitive rates to obtain clients.

So far, I was very impressed with her performance. The afternoon of the day I hired her, she cleaned out her desk and resigned without notice. As she was leaving, she told her coworkers about her new position and one of the first things she had to do was find a competent staff to service the clients they would support. Personally I don’t blame her for not giving notice considering how her boss had treated her. The day after I hired her, she moved into the ground floor with the rest of us. As soon as the top floor’s remodel was complete, we all moved to the top floor. Margie immediately started configuring SPI’s portion of the top floor for her staff.

During the next three months, Margie made an effort to keep in touch with her former coworkers with whom she was friendly. According to Margie, the only thing she mentioned to her former coworkers about working for her was, if they ever became dissatisfied with working for her former boss, they should contact her.

Since the owner of her former firm did not pay his people what they were worth and treated them poorly, it wasn’t long before her former coworkers were asking Margie if there was a position open for them at SPI. She let them know she was interested in hiring them, but would not be able to do so until the top floor remodeling was complete which would take a couple of weeks. Margie moved into her area and quickly developed a very good property management team, which included her former boss’s secretary. Margie’s area was crowded until Mary’s group moved to her area on the second floor. I decided to keep my house in San Diego and SPI was managing the lease on the property.

Margie’s very competitive pricing was a major factor in us acquiring new clients in the months after Mary’s group moved to her remodeled area. However, Margie’s management of the SPI was the major factor in SPI’s rapid growth. SPI quickly gained a reputation for quality service and reasonable fees; which of course led to us gaining additional clients. Within six months of our closing on the office building, Margie’s group was close to being overwhelmed with business from new clients, so she hired additional staff. The new staff also led to a capacity for handling the accounts of additional clients.

She was growing SPI very rapidly. When I asked her about her growth rate, she told me people were begging her to hire them and there was a waiting list of clients who wanted SPI to manage their portfolios. She said that as long as she had a waiting list of clients and good people who wanted to come to work for her, she would hire people and service new clients. She also said, she knew her former employer’s business was in trouble, and while her actions were not targeted at her former employer, she was not sad to hear of his problems.

Originally, Mary had considered naming her group the MIN R&W Group, MIN being an acronym formed from her initials, but she and Gina decided The Nobel Writing Group, LLC would sound more professional. They submitted the paperwork for creating The Nobel Writing Group, LLC on the fourteenth of February; of course, we immediately started referring to it as NWG. We couldn’t settle on a pronunciation and just used the letters N W G. Mary and Gina spent two months planning and organizing NWG before they started interviewing potential employees.

During a meeting held shortly after Gina was hired, she and Vic explained the difference between slander and libel to Mary and what they could and could not say and put in writing. Mary and Gina were very heavily involved in the development of the methods and procedures for creating exposés because they had to be very careful to not violate the laws regarding privacy, slander, and libel. Mary and Gina also had to teach the NWG’s Researcher/Writers the approved methods and procedures that they would use in the field for interviews in addition to what constituted Invasion of Privacy, libel, and slander. One of Gina’s primary duties was to review all of the articles prepared by NWG to ensure the articles would not result in successful defamation lawsuits against NWG. Vic also reviewed the articles before they were published.

One of the important documents they prepared for training identified and described the four phases of developing an exposé. First, gather background information on the media outlet, the owners, and employees. Second, conduct field interviews of the family, friends, and associates of the owners and employees. The document stated that the owners and employees were not to be interviewed. Mary and Gina decided the types of questions asked during an interview would alienate the people associated with the media outlet and the interviewees might consider their interview as an invasion of their privacy. Third, write articles on the media outlet and personal profiles on the owners and employees of the outlet. Fourth, conduct a legal review of the exposé and incorporate any changes.

Once an article or personal profile completed its legal review, it would become the property of The Rattler. The Rattler mailed a copy of the personal profiles with a cover letter to the respective employee or owner(s) for review and comment. The cover letter was a form letter that stated the profile was part of a series of articles The Rattler was going to publish on the media outlet, its owner, and the employees who were working for the outlet at the time the exposé started publication. The cover letter also requested the employee to review the profile, to correct any errors, to provide an explanation of why the corrected passages were in error, the no-later-than date by which The Rattler required the response, and when the exposé was scheduled to begin publication.

Team 1 was formed on the first of March, and completed its training on the thirtieth of March. The Lead Researcher/Writer on Team One was Briana Riker, and the teams other Researcher/Writers were Trent Humber, Rodrick Minter, and Carly Powers. When they finished their training, Mary assigned an exposé to the team.

The team’s exposé would focus on The Celebrity Eye Witness Gazette, its owners, and its employees. The Gazette’s owners were Brandon and Ivy Eslinger, the Chief Editor was Wayne Oakley, and the Reporters were Bonnie Zapf, Denise Brunt, and Isabel Trumbo. The Eye Witness was located in Boston, Massachusetts.

NWG’s interviewers used a number of techniques to obtain an interview and to gather information for their articles about a media outlet and for the profiles they would write on the people of interest. The standard approach to conducting an interview included certain basic techniques.

First, the interviewer would ask permission to record the interview on a tape recorder. This was typically done by telling the interviewee that it would easier on both of them to record the interview than have the interviewer write down all of the interviewee’s responses. While that was true, the main reasons for recording the conversations was: 1) proof of what the interviewee said, and 2) that the interviewee had been told they would be considered a confidential source if they did not provide permission to use their name, and 3) whether the interviewee provided permission to use their name in the articles and profiles.

Assuming the interviewee agreed to being recorded, which was typical, the interviewer would start the tape and state their own name, the interviewee’s name and the date and time. Then they would record telling the interviewee that NWG would attribute the information gained from the interview to a confidential source if they did not want their name used in articles written by NWG.

By letting the interviewee know that their name would not appear in the articles and profiles without their permission, the interviewee would be more relaxed about what they said and reveal more information about the actions of the media outlet and the people of interest than they would have otherwise revealed. The interviewers would later follow up and register the interviewee with NWG as a confidential source for the exposé, even if they later gave permission to use their name in the articles.

At the end of the interview, the interviewee would be asked for permission to use their name in relation to the general background information about the media outlet and people discussed. They were told that any information provided that may be potentially embarrassing to the outlet or person being discussed would be attributed to a confidential source. The interviewer would explain that by attributing some of the information to the interviewee and the rest to a confidential source, it would appear that the information was obtained from different people. Most of the time the interviewee would grant permission to use their name in conjunction with general background statements; on occasion, they gave the interviewer permission to use their name in regard to everything they said.

While Team 1 was in its Research Phase, Briana suggested that NWG team members wear a NWG wind breaker when they were in the field doing interviews. Mary and Gina liked the idea, so they tasked Team 1 with creating a logo for NWG. A couple of days later, Team 1 presented their idea for the logo. They showed Mary and Gina the rough artwork of an ink bottle and feather quill imposed on a human ear. Mary and Gina both liked the logo and the statement it made regarding what NWG did – listen and write.

Team 1 was currently close to halfway through the Writing Process and the team leader, Briana, projected a completion date of early October. The exposé would then begin its Legal Review phase, and Team 1 would be assigned a new exposé to research and write. Actually, Gina would do an in-house review of the articles and personal profiles as they were completed. The Legal Review phase was actually the period during which Vic reviewed the exposé.

Back in June, Mary created her second team of people, Team 2. They were almost finished with their Research phase, and when finished, they would begin their Field Interview phase.

While Mary and Gina had been busy creating The Nobel Writing Group, Steve and Karen were creating and staffing two online newspapers, The Rattler and The Scorpion. Their primary focus was to get The Rattler operational. Vic was also giving Karen on-the-job training and helping her to create The Scorpion.

The main holdup in filing the papers to create Karen’s LLC was finding people for its Board of Directors. We had agreed to put off locating board members until The Rattler was operational, but would proceed as if it was a registered business. The only problem that created was accounting for the costs incurred in setting up the LLC; of course that was just an accounting function, which she worked out with SIMC’s new head accountant, Edmund Winchell.

Needless to say, I was busy staffing SIMC and staying in touch with and assisting with the activities of Margie, Mary, Karen, and Steve’s LLCs.

At first the staff of SIMC and our four LLCs found it odd for Steve, Karen, Mary, Margie, and I to have weekly staff meetings. After they signed their non-disclosure agreements, they knew I owned SIMC and SPI, and I was a partner with Steve, Karen, and Mary in their LLCs. All they knew was we were partners and they didn’t know about the existence of our three General Partnerships or the details of our partnerships.

One of the practices I picked up from the owner of the freight company I worked for before winning the lottery was to hold weekly staff meetings on Friday. When I asked why he didn’t follow the normal practice of holding staff meeting early in the week, he said it gave the managers the weekend to decide on any changes they might need to make at the start of the week. That made a lot of sense to me, so I started the practice at SIMC.

We were a small group when I first bought our building and formal staff meetings weren’t required. During the time the building was remodeled, we intentionally kept the size of SIMC and the LLCs as small as possible, although we did hire for critical positions. Initially, we were all working on the same floor of the building and that made it easy to stay in touch with what was going on. But then the remodel of the second floor was complete and Mary’s group moved into their own area. When the ground floor was completed, Steve and Karen moved into their areas. That made it more difficult all of us to stay on top of what was happening. It was then that I started holding staff meetings.

Steve and I had decided our exposés would begin with a series of background articles on the selected media outlets. When the last of the background articles were being published, we would include a list of the owners, workers, and if applicable the members of the Board of Directors, and state that their profiles would be featured in future articles.

One of the things we would do before publishing the articles on individuals was to send a copy of the personal profiles to the individual (i.e. owner, Director, or employee) for review and comment. That would provide them with the opportunity to comment about anything that was not accurate in their profile. We expected they would object to many of the items in their profile, and we would revise any statements if we did not have sufficient documentation that indicated the content was accurate and appropriate to the exposé. We always replied to any reply we received about the profiles. In the response, we included a copy of the revised profile, or that no changes would be made, and the estimated date that the profile would be published.

I wanted Steve to include a qualifier that would let the employee know they should notify The Rattler if they resigned before we published their profile. Vic and Gina both told me a court would consider such a qualifier as a threat, so we shouldn’t include a qualifier about not publishing the profile if they resigned. They were right for I could see how the employee might view the qualifier as a threat, so I withdrew my suggestion. However, Vic and Gina agreed to a sentence in the cover letter stating that the articles on the outlet and personal profiles of its employees would begin publication on a specific date. At least the employees were given a hint as to how to keep their personal profile from being published.

Once the background articles on the media outlet were published, we would publish the personal profiles of the owner(s) of the media outlet; assuming the outlet was not owned by a corporation. If the outlet was run by a Board of Directors, we would publish the personal profiles of the Directors. The final set of articles would be the personal profiles of the worker level employees.

Wednesday, September 5, 2029...

Our first major problem was Margie’s former boss filed a lawsuit against SPI for Employee Raiding and illegal use of his client list to gain business for SPI. He claimed that Margie had quit without notice because she did not get a promotion that she wanted, and was soliciting his staff to come to work for SPI in order to put him out of business. He also claimed that she was using his client list to recruit his clients as part of her efforts to put him out of business.

The reason behind the lawsuit was, her former employer had lost a large percentage of his experienced employees to us, and their remaining employees weren’t experienced enough to service the company’s clientele. This had been aggravated by an inexperienced Vice President’s poor management decisions and the Vice President of their Commercial Management Division retiring. No, he didn’t come to work for us, but we would have hired him if he had applied.

Margie had followed Vic’s directions. She hadn’t asked any of her former employees to come to work for her; they came to her looking for a better income and a less hostile work environment.

Margie’s advertising had reached many of her former employer’s clientele. With the decline in quality of service provided by her former employer, they contacted SPI. Of course, when possible, Margie sent the employee that had previously serviced that client to explain what SPI could do for them.

Vic and Gina won the lawsuit.

One of the things that did not come out during the lawsuit was a number of Margie’s new employees had taken it upon themselves to contact a few of the clients they supported, prior to turning in their resignation. They informed their clients that they would be resigning soon and going to work for SPI. When the client asked why they were changing employers, they said that they no longer wished to be associated with the company, for they believed the changes in upper management and new internal policies would result in a decline in quality of services provided to their clientele. That is one of the things that probably contributed to our rapid growth.

Friday, October 5, 2029...

Team 1 completed the Writing Phase of The Celebrity Eye Witness Gazette exposé. Mary assigned Team 1 to write an exposé on the God’s Spokesman Weekly Newsletter, which was the next media outlet on our list.

Friday, October 12, 2029...

Gina informed Vic that the Writing Phase of Team 1’s exposé was complete, and she was ready to forward the articles and personal profiles to his office for review. His firm was not as busy as it normally was, so he was able to put more people on the review and they completed the review in a week. It helped that Briana worked with Vic’s team during their review, while the rest of Team 1 began the Research phase of their next exposé. Steve decided Mary’s Team Leader’s involvement with the Legal Phase significantly shortened its duration. Vic, Steve, and Mary added Team Leader involvement to the Legal Review process.

Monday, October 15, 2029

The Rattler mailed the articles on The Celebrity Eye Witness to the Eye Witness’s owners. They also mailed the personal profiles of the Eye Witness’s employees and owners to the respective individuals.