Chapter 60

I really didn't want to get up when morning came, but I could hear the little ones wanting to play. Maggie and Kate were up, so I got up to help. Juanita had gone to bed earlier too and got up with me. As soon as I knew the kids were being taken care of, I laid back down between Sue and Mercy.

We woke up about nine-thirty and had breakfast with Dewey and Sheila. Little Dewey had stayed with us, so he was up early with our kids, having a good time.

Mike, Chanda, Lucille, and Margaret had skipped the wild gambling we had gotten into and were awed by the amounts of money that we had won. Chanda said she was afraid of gambling as she had a brother who was addicted and if he were left alone, he would run through all of her Dad's money. She said even her Dad had a gambling habit. Sue told them that we didn't usually wager the kind of money we had, but since we had kept winning, we ended up playing some high stakes tables.

Dewey didn't help when he said, "When Steve puts money down in a casino, it isn't really gambling. I've watched him so many times, and so far he's always a winner. Never as big as this time, but he's always a winner.

Chanda said, "Don't ever let my brother hear that or he'll want to follow you around like a puppy."

We planned on the girls visiting some of the exclusive shops here before heading back to the boat. Dewey said he had a board meeting in Paris, so he would be leaving today as well. I told Dewey our schedule and that we were going to sail directly to the United Kingdom. It was agreed to by all that we would pass on going to the Spanish Riviera in order to save a couple of days. We had reservations at Brighton and would travel up to London from there, and after that we were going to sail to Dublin to meet Chanda's family. Mike had made arrangements for us to dock at the family yacht club there.

Dewey said that we would probably have to catch up with each other back home as he was on a tight schedule for the rest of his trip in Europe. The girls all hugged and kissed, then our two groups separated. Ed took the girls to the plazas to shop while Mike and I stayed at the hotel to watch and play with the kids.

When the women all returned, we had an afternoon meal and headed for the boats. Once at the yacht club, we parted with Ed who was going to fly back to Italy. Mike asked when we wanted to leave and Mercy answered for me. "How about as soon as we can get the engines running? We'll check the boat out, and talk to you guys before we shove off. You all can travel a lot faster than we can, so you can stay here an extra day while we head out. You'll still pass us in a day or so."

Chanda said, "I was thinking it would be nice to travel with you again. Cory and Corinne love to play with your kids so much. Do you think you could take us with you again? My crew will follow along or they can go ahead and go straight to Dublin."

I looked at Sue and she smiled and said, "Let's get some clothes for your family as we will be almost a week getting to England."

The girls made a couple of trips between boats for clothes and food. I ordered and received a bunch of fresh vegetables from the green grocer who services the yachts. When I went to pay my bill, Mike had already taken care of it for us. He wouldn't take any money for it either. I told him that we needed to pay our way, but he just brushed it off.

Around three, I called Tiny to find out what he had going.

"Steve, I think we can be involved in some oil well wildcatting in Mexico. It may or may not be a good investment for you, but I think we can control some of our destiny doing this. Exxon has a geology team working there identifying drilling locations. Ben and I started an investment group a while ago that has been used to buy land, including mineral rights to drill on. So far we're running at around seventy percent of locations that have come in. The geologists think the other thirty percent should come in too, but will have to go deeper. To date we have been able to sell the drilled and capped wells for about thirty times the cost of purchase and drilling."

"Tiny, if you've done that well, why do you need new money? If you and Ben have sold your product for thirty times investment you should be rolling in money."

"Well, we are, sort of, but at this minute we need an additional thirty million to complete a drilling area that is already producing from six wells."

"How much do you, Ben, and the 401K have out in this right now?" I asked, concerned.

"At this minute all of the investors, including a good chunk of money of yours through Ben, all together have right at a hundred and seventy million into this. The additional will make the total right at two hundred million."

"Man, Tiny, this sounds risky as hell. I'm not happy to hear that you have so much in one pot. How much of a percentage of the 401K do you have in this thing?"

"We are at the max of the original agreed upon twenty-five percent for high risk. Ben said you and Sue are in to the max of your high risk limit. The rest of us have copied you and have invested that same percentage."

"So, Tiny, where do I get the thirty million to do this?"

"Okay, for one thing I know you just won a shit load of money in Monte Carlo. I almost wish I could send you back to the casino to get some more. The way they were talking, they didn't want to see you again very soon though. Two, I've recently transferred over twenty-five million into your and Sue's joint account. These are profits that are company excess that I have to get out of our ledgers. Three, you just received some royalty checks from some of your licensing agreements for about five million. Four, Ben says you and Sue are so cash rich right now that he needs to put some heavy money somewhere for tax purposes. I figure you and Sue for about seventy-five to eighty million excess right now. If you were to put another thirty into this, I feel the success of it would be guaranteed."

"Where did all that money come from? Jesus, Tiny. You're throwing around big numbers like loose change."

"You have over a hundred successful franchises, dealerships, and distributorships all over the globe. All of them are in the black and anticipating good future returns. You also have three separate charter companies that are jointly owned by you and the rest of us. Steve, you have money, lots of it."

"I thought I was donating enough in Tampa to offset all this."

"That would be true, Steve, if you would quit growing. You just opened Canada and it looks like you're going to end up with about seven distributorships, a cart manufacturing facility, and two major rebuilding plants up there. We've had some inquiries from Europe for rebuilding facilities, and even for our new police cart. If you had quit growing a couple of years ago, your donation schedule would be perfect, but now it is about a tenth of what you would need to offset taxes."

"Okay, Tiny, try to protect the money going into this deal and see if you can wean the investment capital out of it and use only what we've made, you know, the profits. Since these profits are all out of country, we won't owe as much U.S. taxes, but we will owe Mexico a bunch. Use what you need, but leave a couple of hundred grand for me to live on and raise my kids."

I was in a state of shock to hear about all this money. "Tiny, I'm glad you're who you are. You are amazing, and if I didn't know you better I'd think you were printing money somewhere. Thanks for watching out for us. All of us."

"Ah hell, Steve, I do this for you and everyone while I do it for myself. You've made me so much, that now I just play with the money instead of thinking of it as investments. Let me go play with the Mexicans and see what we can do."

"Tiny, that is one of the things that I've been worried about. I have this feeling about the future of the economy. If you've noticed the price of oil is beginning to go up to the point where people are worried. If oil gets too high, it's going to play havoc with world commerce. I'm not smart about a lot, but we have a lot of people working and if the economy tanks, we are talking about several thousand of our people that could lose their jobs. I want to find some guaranteed, recession proof business that we can put people into. I want to prepare our investments to possibly trade commodities instead of stocks. Help me think on this and get all of the guys to do some brainstorming. If the economy shuts down, how do we keep our people working? We need to find products to make, to fix, to rebuild, anything that is recession proof. Let's even work on converting our currency into something hard, fixed, maybe even gold."

"You're serious about this, aren't you? Do you think this terrorism thing is going to do that?"

"It's the terrorism, the idiots that think the world is going to boil, the greedy people who sell the oil, the dumb investors that run some big financial corporations, all of it. I think it will come to a head one of these days and I'd like to be ahead of the game by a couple of years, not a couple of months."

Tiny sighed, "I'll work on it. You've given me something to think about. I'll bet Henry has some ideas about this as well. I'll get Ben and Henry together and we'll brainstorm a little."

"Good, go make lots more money for everyone. I'll talk to you from England or Ireland."

I wasn't that worried about whether we lost the thirty million after what happened last night. I did wonder what the ramifications of winning that much money would mean. Who could guess that you could win multiple times in a row at thirty-five to one odds. Sure mounts up quick.

By five we were ready to leave, so the girls did the lines while I eased away from the dock. Mike's and Chanda's big motor yacht was going to begin following us when they were finished stocking the boat. It didn't take an exceptionally long time to get out far enough to raise our sails, but we did have to navigate around several small islands on the way to Gibraltar.

The trip was fun, with the many women having some daytime sunbathing sessions and a few late night hot tub parties. I didn't feel right about leaving the helm completely, so I napped while one of the girls guided the boat.

Five days later, we were in Brighton. It was cold, damn cold. It's a good thing we had good heat, as it was almost too cold to man the boat from outside. We did find out that the inside helm was pretty nice and that we stayed a lot warmer inside.

The two families took a train to London and stayed two days, going to several of the attractions. We saw Buckingham palace and even saw the queen. While in London, I did meet with several dealers that were in the area. I pitched them on purchasing our welding equipment, but I didn't get any great response.

It took us less than a day to go back around the southern tip of England and to get to Dublin. As soon as we docked, Chanda's father came aboard to see his daughter and her twins. The man marveled at our boat, saying he wished he had a sailboat as it was such a gentle way to travel.

We were all invited to stay at his home outside the city. Chanda and Mike insisted that we join them. The girls packed up some clothes and we were transported to a junior Irish castle that Chanda had grown up in. The place was huge, making my concerns for enough space unjustified.

That evening, Mac, short for Mackenzie, Chanda's father, and I had a long discussion. When he found out I was the owner of S&S Enterprises, he said, "I'm very glad to meet the originator of the "Perfect" theme for all your buildings. I saw an article about your business a couple of years ago, and I have a man who had some training in your main location. He raves about how everyone is in a good mood all the time because they are constantly trying to do their best. He says it carries over to their personal lives."

"Where did the man work that he had training at the company?" I asked, curious to see whom we had lost along the way.

Mac answered, "He worked in Jacksonville when he was sent to Tampa for training. He came over here, following a young lady he was crazy about. He's since married her and is employed with my company. He talks about S&S all the time."

"That's nice to hear," I smiled. "I think most everyone, in all of our locations, have taken it to heart. They really do wish to produce as good a product as possible. I think it's because of this we have been successful so far."

"While you're here, I'd like you to take a look at a couple of things, and make arrangements for a European sales representative to visit me. My business is strictly handling shipping and receiving within Great Britain's ports. Your company sells some of the giant lifts necessary to move the big containers around. We need more of them, and I need to set up a repair shop somewhere that can maintain them. I've heard you do that in the States, but it wouldn't be feasible to ship ours back there. We need something local. Now, if you were to open a shop here to do that sort of thing, I'm sure I could help you find the space, the manpower, and the customers to make it a success."

I was stunned, "You know, Mac, I've never considered having a shop similar to what we have at home, overseas. That is a decent idea and I'll have to take it up with some of my key people to see what they think. Do you think that a location in Great Britain would be able to serve France, and possibly Germany and Spain?"

"Now you're talking. A location here would be easiest for you because of the language thing. I'd bet you could draw business from all over Europe. Most of the trade done between the countries is done either by train or barge. If you were repairing big lifts here, most would probably come to you by barge. Even from London, they ship large items by barge to Dublin. It's about as fast, and it's cheaper, as a barge can take several large items at a time. A truck can only take a single lift without any other freight."

"We would need a location near a port or we would have to build a dock to support a large crane to lift the big lifts on and off a barge." I thought for a minute and said, "A waterfront location would be good, but I'm sure one of those might be difficult to come by."

Mac sat back in his chair, "I have just the place. We are moving one of our factories away from the waterfront because it is too difficult for a lot of the office workers to reach. There will soon be better public transportation to the building, but right now there isn't. Let's take a look at the building tomorrow to see if it would work for an operation of yours."

"Sounds good, Mac. We'll do it."

The next day, while the ladies toured all of the shops in Dublin, Mac and I went down to the waterfront area to see his building. The building was an old converted World War II plant building. The steel structure with windows on all of the high sides was in remarkable shape. There were even some old blackout window panes still up on the walls. It looked to be a little larger than the huge building we had bought next to our original building. As I walked through the plant, I could see mostly happy employees working in clean workspaces. I thought about what it would take to completely clean the building from top to bottom and to paint everything, including the floor. It would be expensive, but would brighten the building tremendously.

Outside, the building had covered areas that housed completed product and materials waiting to be used in manufacturing. The dock area was quite expansive, with two very large cranes. One crane was unloading a barge that was tied up at the dock, while the other crane was loading a container ship. Mac explained that he made a little extra by providing loading and unloading facilities for other businesses in the area. He said the money he made from providing these services paid for a good chunk of his operating costs.

There was a good amount of property surrounding the building that could be used for future expansion if it were needed.

Mac and I went back to his Irish castle and were sitting in his garden sunroom. It gave the feeling of being outdoors, without the cold wind that was blowing outside.

"What would I have to do to buy property here, Mac?"

"I didn't propose for you to buy the property, but to lease it, Steve. Would you really want to buy it?"

I nodded, "If I buy the property, I would be committing to be successful. If I only leased it, I would be giving myself an excuse to fail and quit. How about if we have two or three independent appraisers figure on what the building is worth and we'll deal from that point forward."

Mac smiled, "That's very fair, Steve, and I have two appraisals now. How about you getting one more to confirm these and we'll deal."

"When are you moving your operations to the new site, Mac? Is it imminent or long range?"

"We'll be moving in March. The building will be available to modify after April first. Do you have an estimate of how much time it takes to get a building ready for you to work out of?"

"I do, Mac, it usually takes a minimum of a month to completely clean the building from top to bottom, paint it, and partition the building for multiple uses. Your office area is about right, but I might open up some of it for cubicles and modify the walls to be windows, so people can be seen in the offices, and the people within the offices can observe the floor. I like the upstairs offices as they do have observation windows now, but I'd like them to be even larger. One of the things I like to do with a work area is to have it painted white. Floor, walls, ceiling, everything painted white, so it can be cleaned up to look new every day. It's my way to help the workers feel good about where they work. If they start their day in a clean environment, they will make every effort to do better work. It's an attitude thing."

"Would you put signs up like you do in the States?"

"Of course, and we would have "Is it perfect" signs over every door.

"The motto has to be an attitude and a desired procedure for it to be effective. It takes men a little time to buy into the way to work, but when they do, the sky is the limit."

Mac handed me a fresh drink, "I'm going to learn a lot from you, Steve. I've been doing this for a lot of years, but I'm going to learn how to become a real leader in my industry."

"Mac, I'm going to need some good lawyers, I think you call them solicitors. I'm going to need some accountants, and of course, I'm going to need mechanics. I will need the absolute best available. I don't want to hire them to begin here. I want to hire them and send them to our facility in Florida to learn how we do it. The main location produces more rebuilt super lifts than anywhere in the world. I want the Dublin facility to rival the Florida one."

"I think I can do a good business here with some of our carts. We have several that can be used for transportation in traffic, and I'd bet they would be popular here. I'll import a few models and see how they are accepted. We'll put the steering on the right to make it comfortable here and see how we do. I know we get about fifty miles to the gallon with our three-wheeled police vehicle, so it should be popular here."

"My design group has been working on a forklift with fewer moving parts for warehouse work. We have developed some of our own hydraulics now, so we may be able to build a lift here without having to license patents from half a dozen different companies. If that gets on the ground, we can begin building them here too, and market them throughout Europe."

"Steve, have you put this all together mentally since we talked last night?"

"I've had to think this way when we've opened up other markets as well, Mac. Canada is still developing, and we had to react quickly there to get our foot in the door and to maintain a customer base. The company is sort of used to making things happen fast."

"I'm afraid I'm a little more methodical than that. I have to study things a long while before I make the first move. It seems you just dive right in."

"I guess I do, Sir. I have some strong people to rely upon who can put things together with me and for me. All I have to do is to come up with the idea and give it a push. They make it happen the way I envision it."

"As a matter of fact, I need to call my key man and get his opinion of all of this. He may wish with some others to come see it in order to figure on what's to be done."

I left Mac in his garden room and went upstairs to the room we had been given. I checked the cell phone to see if I had a signal and found it to be strong.

"Hey, Tiny, want to begin an operation in Dublin?"

"What kind, Steve?"

"To start with, a super lift sales and rebuild plant. I think we could build carts here too, and perhaps the new forklifts we are designing."

"What brought this on, Steve?"

"The lady of the couple we met in Italy has a father who is a manufacturer here in Dublin. He is an extremely good businessman and from what I've been able to find out, a good manufacturer. His company builds military products and has since World War II. He's well thought of throughout Great Britain."

I had paused a second. "Anyway, he has a building that he is giving up near the waterfront. This would be important to marketing our rebuild shop here in Europe. Most of our clients would be on the water and we could have most of our shipping done by barge. It seems to be the way they do a lot of commerce here. Very few trucks, but some rail traffic through the new tunnel."

Tiny was laughing, "You're a quick study, Dude. You go visit someone and decide to begin an entire manufacturing facility in some foreign country. What is it going to cost?"

"I have no idea, Tiny. I need some numbers help. I'll need a number cruncher if this works out, and I'll need Abe or someone like him to start the rebuild shop here. It's going to take every bit of a month or so to clean and paint the building. There will be some minor structure stuff too, but we should be able to make this work quickly if we want it. We're going to need some legal help here too. Can you call our accounting firm to see if they have any contacts here?"

"No need, Ben has dozens of contacts over there. I'll give him a call and have him call you. Like I told you the other day, we need some investments, but not necessarily foreign investments. This isn't going to take that much to get going and if it pans out, it should be self supporting quickly. I'll get on it, though."