Chapter 70: Becoming An Entrepreneur

Monday morning, I called Andrea Greene at her office and left a message. She returned the call around noon. “Yes, Carl, how can I help you? Is everything still on track with the closing?”

I should have known her first thought was to our current deal. “It should be. I talked to John Steiner last week and he indicated the closing was the end of this week. I’m calling you about something totally different.”

“All right, what’s on your mind?” she asked.

“Do you get involved with commercial real estate at all, or do you know somebody who does?”

“Yes, I can handle it. I do a little of everything, jack of all trades, master of none, I suppose you can say. What do you have in mind?”

“Well, it’s not for me. A close friend of mine has a business, buying and repairing and selling motorcycles, and he’s doing very well. Unfortunately, his present location is just too small! He is busting out at the seams and needs to relocate and expand. Can you help him?” I asked.

“Probably, but I think I need to meet him first and see what he needs.”

“When can you do that? This afternoon? This week?”

She hesitated slightly, and I could almost hear her flipping through an appointment book. “I’m free this afternoon after two, but then not again until Thursday.”

“Okay, give me five minutes to confirm this.” I hung up and called the cycle shop. Tessa agreed they would both be there. I called Andrea back and gave her the address and promised to meet her there.

Then I got off the phone and Marilyn put me to work doing the laundry. I was starting to think about getting an office, simply to hide from Marilyn when she was in a house cleaning mood.

After lunch, I grabbed my briefcase and kissed Marilyn and Charlie good-bye. I was starting to tote around with me a mini-office in the briefcase, including all the details of the land purchase and the house construction. Now I was adding to it with my planner and address book. Maybe I really did need to set up an office.

I got to the cycle shop a few minutes early. I didn’t see Andrea’s car yet. Tessa noticed me and we waved at each other, but I decided to stay outside and wait for Andrea. She showed up about ten minutes late. “Sorry I’m late! I get lost in these old industrial parks.”

“It shouldn’t be a problem. Come on in, let me introduce you.” I held the door to the shop for her and ushered her inside.

Tessa was already coming around from behind the counter to greet us. “Hi, there, I’m Tessa Tusk. Welcome to Tusk Cycle!”

Andrea held out her hand. “Thank you. I’ve never been in a motorcycle shop before. What do you do here?”

“Well, we do some repairs and maintenance for bikers, but a lot of what we are doing these days is buying and selling used bikes. Tusker - he’s my husband, Jim Tusk - he gets these old bikes in and then rebuilds and resells them. Like this one,” she said, pointing at a gleaming chrome and purple lacquered Harley. “He picked this one up as a junker for about a thousand, put another thousand into it in parts, rebuilt it and repainted it, and we just sold it this morning for ten thousand!”

“Very nice!” I commented.

“I wouldn’t have picked you as the motorcycle type, Carl,” said Andrea with a smile.

“Who? Me? No way!” I said, waving my hands.

Tessa just laughed at that, and then a booming laugh came in from the garage. Tusker came in wearing grease-stained overalls and wiping his hands on an old rag. His hair was done up in a ponytail, and his five o’clock shadow showed it was around half past four. “Carl? He’s no biker!”

“Tusker, meet Andrea Greene. She’s the broker we’re buying our property through,” I said.

He smiled and nodded and kept wiping his hands off. “Don’t bother shaking. I get pretty messy in there. I just ripped the engine off a ‘52 Indian Chief that has seen better days. When I get through with it, though, it will be a collector’s piece!”

“I have no idea what that means,” I told Andrea. “Tusker and Tessa are some of my oldest friends, going back to high school. I told them they needed to expand, but they have no room to grow here.”

“Yeah, that’s an issue,” agreed Tusker. “My service bays are too small, as is the showroom here, and there’s no parking for our customers, let alone the employees, and I need to hire at least one more person as it is.”

“We have got to move!” chimed in Tessa.

Andrea nodded sympathetically, and then began looking around the place. She did ask one interesting question - “Did you buy or lease this place?”

My friends looked at each other for a second, and then said, “Lease. Why?”

“Well, if you had bought it, you’d have to sell it, right?” They gaped at each other. They had never thought of that. Andrea continued, “If you leased it, you could simply end the lease, or even break out of it early.”

“Is that what we should do on a new place?” asked Tessa.

Andrea shrugged and smiled. “Don’t know yet, we’ll have to see. Let’s find you two a better place first and then worry about the finances.”

I piped up at that. “Andrea, do you know a decent commercial bank? Their current bank is giving them grief.”

“Maybe. Who is your current bank?”

I gave a blank look in reply and looked at my friends.

Tusker answered, “I think it’s Clifton Trust now. We started out at Berkshire, but I believe they got bought last year.”

Andrea gave them a strange look. “Why them? They’re a residential building and loan!”

Tessa said, “Well, they were the only bank we had. We both had checking and savings accounts there, and we borrowed ten grand from our parents, five from each, and did everything else with credit cards when we started.”

I buried my face in my hands. If I had been around, I would have helped them arrange a decent financing package, but I had been off in Fayetteville at the time. If they could survive with those interest rates, they were doing well. I rubbed my face for a second and then looked over at Andrea. “I think we can find them some better financing.” To my friends I said, “No wonder your bank doesn’t want you around. They’re a residential mortgage bank, not a commercial bank. Give me a few days and I can find you something better.”

“Try Maryland National, they can handle this,” agreed Andrea. She turned back to Tusker and Tessa. “Listen, give me a few days. I don’t have anything off the top of my head, but I can find something for you. Here’s my suggestion - move a bit further out, say Cockeysville or north of there. The price will be lower and for the same payment you can get a larger piece. It will be simpler to modify an existing property than develop raw land, too.”

Tusker and Tessa looked at each other and nodded. “I can’t believe it’s going to happen. It seems awfully fast!” he said.

“Hey, Tusker, if it was a bike you just picked up, you’d hustle it out, right, so that you can resell it and make your money back, right? You wouldn’t let it sit around. Same thing here. The sooner you can do this, the sooner you can grow your business and the sooner you can move out of your apartment and the sooner you can hire Andrea to find you a house,” I told him.

Andrea laughed at this, especially when Tessa elbowed Tusker and told him to shut up.

I spent most of the next morning on the phone with several banks. I didn’t know any bankers, but I can read the phone book and figure out who to call. By lunchtime I had something in place and told Marilyn.

Her attitude surprised me. “Why are you doing this?” she asked.

“Well, they are paying rates too high and need to expand and get on a business footing,” I responded.

“No, I mean, why are you doing this? Why aren’t they?”

“Well, I am pretty good at this business stuff, you have to admit that,” I said with a smile.

Marilyn was serious, however. “Yeah, but when did you become their boss?”

“What in the world are you talking about?”

“Are they your friends or your employees? Did you tell them to do this, or did they ask you?”

“Marilyn, it wasn’t like that! You know me better than that,” I protested.

That earned me a smile. “Yes, I know you. I know you better than you know you. You can be real bossy at times. These are your friends, not your second lieutenants!”

I snorted at that, but it made me think. For revenge, I toasted some bread for lunch and made myself a couple of sardine sandwiches. Marilyn loudly protested the smell, and I retaliated by threatening to teach Charlie about sardine sandwiches and anchovy pizzas. That brought another round of protests. It reminded me of the first time she came to my family’s house in the summer, during my first go, when my mom had a crab feast. I love steamed crabs and showed Marilyn how to tear one apart and eat one. Afterwards, my mother asked Marilyn if she wanted a second, and Marilyn made a classic reply - ’Do I have to?’ I damn near died of laughter.

I decided to take Marilyn’s advice to heart, even if I didn’t admit it to her. I’d never hear the end of it. I’d be hearing ‘I told you so!’ until the day I died. She can hold a grudge and beat a dead horse with the best of them, like my mother.

I got a call from Tessa the middle of the next week, just a day after our closing on our property. I had pointedly avoided asking Andrea how things were going, and she hadn’t volunteered anything. Tessa said they had looked at a place and wanted me to come out and look at it. I met them at their place, and they turned it over to the staff and we drove in their car out to the prospective site. It was off York Road, north of Paper Mill Road, at the site of an A&P grocery store that had gone out of business.

My first thought was that it was certainly large enough for them, as in, it was too big. “Well, it’s certainly bigger than what you have now!” I commented, as we climbed out of the car.

“But not too big for what we want,” said Tessa.

“Are you kidding? This place is huge!” I said.

Tusker clapped me on my shoulder. “You forget, this isn’t going to be just for the repair shop, this is for a dealership, remember?”

“Yeah, I guess so,” I said slowly. Now that I looked around, it would probably be good for that. Tons of parking, lots of glass windows, and a cavernous space inside. It was a little plain looking, but that wouldn’t be a problem. “Have you been inside?”

“Last Friday. Andrea gave us a key. Come on in.” He unlocked the front door and we stepped inside.

It looked like an abandoned grocery store. Most of the store shelves had been removed and you could see in the cracked old linoleum where they had been. The checkout aisles were still in place, although the cash registers were all gone. It was a little cluttered and messy, but nothing that a crew couldn’t clean up in a few days. Tusker was talking excitedly. “We put the bikes for sale up here, in the front, facing the windows. Over on the side there we can do an office, and a counter for Tessa and whoever. In the back is a loading dock, and we can bring in bikes or parts back there.” He led the way through some swinging doors to the stockroom area. This end looked trashed, with a lot of debris and some pooled water at one end.

I pointedly walked over to this spot and looked up at the ceiling. “We talked to Andrea about this. We told her that the price would have to be reduced to cover the repairs and cleanup on the place,” he said.

I smiled up at him. “Very good. That way I don’t have to say anything. Marilyn says I’ve been too bossy lately.”

That set Tessa to laughing, and Tusker remarked, “You? Bossy? Never!” at which point Tessa really broke down.

“Keep it up, laughing girl!” I told her. I scratched the side of my face with my extended middle finger and got Tusker to laughing as well. “Same to you, too, buddy!”

After a few minutes more of looking around, I agreed that the site was suitable, especially if they had a dealership of some sort. “Do the payments work out?”

“They do if we can keep up our level of sales and increase them slightly. We’ll need a bank loan to cover transfer costs and setup, also operating capital,” answered Tessa. She was always the real business head of the team.

“I left some phone numbers of banks in my car back at your place. I’ll give them to you when we get back. You two can make your own phone calls!” That got me another round of laughter. Maybe Marilyn was right, after all.

The rest of the week I spent with Marilyn and Charlie, and one day we drove out to the property on Mount Carmel Road to meet Bill Marsbury. He had a quick preliminary drawing to show us, though not any blueprints, and we used the drawing to pound some stakes in the ground. It was really getting overgrown, and he promised to have a brush hog, a giant industrial size lawn mower mounted on a tractor, sent out to clear it. We also looked over the plans and drew a couple of minor revisions on them, then initialed them. The way it looked, the top of the H would be pointed west, towards the side road where the driveway was. The bottom of the H would be towards the center of the property. It was all fairly level, or would be so after some grading, and would enable us to have a big back yard.