Chapter 60

I decided to grab a backpack, some clean underwear, and some cash and buy a plane ticket. June was just starting and it looked like the weather would be a little cool. I made a one-way reservation to fly out of Orlando to Anchorage for a week later. While I was home, I saw Mom and Dad as well as most of my friends. I called Marshal, made an immediate appointment to see him. I got in the car and went to his office.

He greeted me like an old friend and invited me into his office. We talked about school, his son and his family, before making the turn towards business. I asked how his sales were doing and he told me that there was some push back at first but now the salesman are all on board and making more money per sale. He said that across the board, his average sale has increased forty percent but the kicker has been that repeat business is up sixty percent because they see the ads working. If a customer used to spend $10,000, now they spend $14,000, and then do it again the same year for another $14,000, so the sale of that customer went from $10,000 to $28,000. That's an $18,000 up sell. That equals $360 to me. I kidded Marshal and he said, "I was serious when I agreed to the sales deal. I've bought you over $400,000 worth of silver. It hasn't done much and is still going for around $7 an ounce. I bought a million ounces after we last talked so my $6 million has grown to $7 million."

"Marshal, my charts are still pointing higher. Something is happening. If you want to lend me $10 million, I'll pay you ten percent interest."

"You have increased my sales by $20 million so far, so if you're serious, I'll take the risk."

"I'll take it. Please buy silver with it and keep track of it for me. I can pay the interest and taxes when I sell."

He said, "Was there another reason you stopped by or are we just kicking the can around the room?"

I said, "Marshal, I need to borrow money, but am not sure of the best way to do it. I'll be graduating in a year and starting my empire. I can push it back five to ten years while I build my capital base, but I was hoping to start it sooner and wanted to get some ideas about the best way to go about doing it.?

"I thought we were all going to become rich when the silver hits," he said.

"Marshal, when I say empire, I mean empire. You now have around a million ounces of silver. If you get out at a price of $40 an ounce, that's worth $40 million. I have just less than three million ounces, if I get to an average investment of three dollars an ounce then when I cash out at $40 or $42, I should have about $120 million before taxes with about $80 million after taxes not including what you are investing for me. I think it will take another seven to ten years to turn that into around ten billion and that's what I need to start building my business. I can go in slow but my goal is to put all of my competition out of business before they know I'm in business."

"That's a lot of money. How would you put your competitors out of business?"

"We've talked about this before. If you can find a better way of doing business and patent it then you can leave your competition where they can't compete. For your newspapers, you must have someone cut down trees, and grind them into a pulp. Then you add a bunch of chemicals in a factory. From there they make the newsprint and then put it into big rolls. Then they ship the rolls and finally they use them with large printing presses, to run copies of the paper. They fold it, bundle it and ship it to delivery drivers, who place it on people's front step, and into coin operated boxes and stores. That sounds like a lot of people and machines just to deliver the news. If I came up with a way for your writers to write and your editors to edit the news but just before it hits the presses, we then stop. We run the copy through a machine and it prints out in every customers home. It prints on a paper that will erase itself when they run it through the next day for the next day's news. The home machine and the paper will both last for ten years and the cost is $13. Therefore, for me to print the paper for one customer for ten years is a delivered to the door cost of $13. That's equal to a penny every three days for the printing. Can you compete with me?"

"No. I can't compete with that."

"Marshal, if I started tomorrow I could only afford to build my building, hire the staff, gather the news and deliver it to 10,000 people. It will take me ten years to get the rest of the machines built and delivered. While I do this over the next ten years, you will buy one of my machines, figure out how it works, build your own, and then compete with me. If I have a machine for every customer in the country when I open my doors, you're out of business. I need money for those machines."

"Are you serious about the paper?"

"No. I have another business but I was trying to explain it in your terms. I'm going to revolutionize the world."

"Britt, I'm going to need more if I'm going to see about getting money." He said.

I reached in my bag and handed him an NDA. He looked at it and then signed it. I said, "Marshal, if I didn't trust you, I wouldn't be here. I need this to protect a trillion dollars." I started to lay out my plan and about fifteen minutes in, he stopped me. He said, "Britt, this is so simple and so huge that I can't believe it hasn't been done. How much do you need?"

"I would like to have $50 billion to start. I could use more or take less, but for me to have the doors wide open on day one that's what I'm thinking. When we're at one hundred percent capacity, I expect payroll to reach over $3 billion a week. This is to cover startup and infrastructure."

"What's the goal?" he asked, "Where do you get off?"

"The government will quickly declare it a monopoly but it will take five years of court battles to figure out how to make it work. I'll drive the costs so low that nobody else can compete. When I set it up, it will be multiple corporations working together. If I make one percent of gross revenue, I'll make billions. Anyone that tries to compete with me at that level can't possibly work on one percent gross revenue and can't come within twenty-five percent of my costs so the American people will have to pay twenty-five percent more or continue to use me. What's Congress going to do? Monopolies are bad because they can raise prices without checks or balances. That's a tough argument."

"I'll have contracts with all the ancillary companies in place with the money-making company so if they take over one or the other, I'll still get paid after they buy me out."

He asked, "Are you looking for a partner?"

"Not really. I'll take on a partner if they're willing to accept a fixed price buyout."

"What do you mean by that?" he asked.

"Marshal, you own one million ounces of silver at $6 an ounce. Today is June 1. I'm going to manage your silver for you. In the next six months what would you consider a good return on your silver?"

"One hundred percent," he said.

"So if you were to get $12 an ounce or even $14 an ounce on Dec. 1st. you would be comfortable selling?" I asked.

"Yes I would take $14 as a good return."

"So if we had a deal that said at any time in the next six months I could buy this silver from you for $30 an ounce would you be happy?"

"Yes, $30 would be a great return."

"If it's $14 or $26 you still own it and can do whatever you want but if it gets to $30 then it's mine. You no longer own it. You get your $30 and go away. We're no longer partners and I no longer work for you. If the price goes to $40 or $140, you still only get $30 and you go away. You were happy with $14 and you got $30 so you can't get pissed off because I made another $100. Does that make sense?"

"So I would be rich and you would be filthy rich. That seems fair. You have the idea and the plan and I just have money. Others have money but nobody has the plan. What's the buyout you were considering?"

"I'm thinking ten years. Using one billion as a number I would think around ten would be a good price to buy it out. That would mean their investment would double every three years or a twenty-five percent compounded return. I would want to structure it such that I could buy out anytime in the first ten years at ten and then up to twenty years at the double every three years rate, prorated."

"I would invest at that rate." He said.

We shook on it, reminded him of the NDA, and I told him my projections.

"I want to rock the world and the infrastructure. This should take three years to see positive returns. It will make money after three years but still have debt. I can drop the price of services ten percent to steal business and still make a twenty to thirty percent profit margin. Invested back into the company, it will take two to five years to eliminate all the debt and then all the savings to pay off the investors will turn into profits. All the other companies and services will all be up and running and for the group as a whole, it wouldn't surprise me if we were making over $10 million an hour in profit. That means that every four days and four hours you should create a billion dollars in profit. I would decrease the price to keep the profit margin lower after I bought you out. However, if I dropped from thirty percent to one percent that just means three months to net a billion instead of four days. We have one year to figure out the financing." I left Marshal to think about all that I'd laid out to him.

It was summer so the next week I flew into Anchorage and rented a car. The size of the state was so overwhelming. As an example, to drive from Anchorage to Juneau takes almost twenty hours, while from Anchorage to Fairbanks is almost seven hours. I don't think I have the time or desire to make those kinds of treks. I'm sure that they would be pretty but since I only had a few months until I had to return to school, I didn't think that I could fit it in. There was too much open space to make it worth my time. I spent a week in Anchorage, met the some locals, and went out to see Portage glacier and some other local attractions. I saw a moose and many eagles that helped with my photo collection. I met some local girls but they were just teases and I didn't want to waste my time. I decided to head home. I was at the airport and saw a direct flight to Seattle, so at the last minute, I decided to spend some time there.

I flew in and soon I was down between Seattle and Tacoma. I took a cab up to Seattle and checked into the Hilton. I spent a day sight seeing and stopped at the original Starbucks to have a cup of coffee. While having my coffee, I was reading along in the local paper. At the same time, I was thinking about what I would do for the rest of the summer, so on a whim, I looked at the jobs section. There was a posting for a job down at the wharf for a summer intern to work on transportation schedules. I almost forgot my coffee as I hailed a cab for the docks.

I found the place and they asked me to fill out an application. I waited for a few minutes when a man around forty-five came out and asked me to come into his office. He said, "Hello, my name is Joe Carlson. I see that you are looking for a summer intern spot in our division. We are in charge of all of the trucks and trains that take the freight that's unloaded off the cargo ships and get them to where they need to go. We are working to revise the methods we use and develop a new system using computers to manage the freight."

"So you want me to design a new system for you?"

"We know what we want to do so we are not looking for someone to create the system but to help us do the research on the method we will use and to get it in place. We thought this would be a good opportunity for one of the kids at U Dub (University of Washington) to get some work experience. We hired one but he'd other stuff that he needed to do, like go on vacation. I looked at your application and I see you're from the University of Florida and you're here in Seattle. Can you tell me what brought you to our office?"

"Mr. Carlson, I'm just the opposite of your last employee. I was on vacation and got bored so I decided I needed to work. I already have my apartment, classes and books at the University and classes start on August 17. As long as I'm on a plane by August 16, I'm yours twenty-four hours a day seven days a week. I want to get into the shipping business when I graduate and this is better than anything I could learn at school."

"What kind of work have you done in the past?"

"Mostly brain work. My last job was in process consulting for a media company in Orlando."

"I don't see that on your resume application. How long were you there?"

"I fixed the problem in twenty minutes."

"That doesn't sound much like a job."

"Can I make a long distance call so you can check my references?"

He said, "I'm interested to see how this call goes, so sure."

I called and got Marshal's secretary. I was on speakerphone when she answered. "Peterson Communications, Office of the President."