THE USUAL NOTE FROM LB: From the summer of 2002 to the spring of 2010, Gwen the Beautiful and I were the proud and often exhausted owners of a beautiful Ozarks property we called Cloud Creek Ranch.
In many ways, the ranch was paradise. But it was a paradise with a price that started going up before we even knew it existed. Here’s another Monday musing about our adventure and the lessons we learned.
Oh, and if y’all detect any irony, please believe me when I say it comes straight from the universe and not your kindly Uncle Larry B.
by Larry Brody
The Good Ole Boy Network is alive and well.
Not only in Paradise, but also in China.
On Gwen the Beautiful and my recent trip there, I took part in more business meetings than I have in the last half dozen years. They were part of my job as a consultant to my old friend Frank Lee, who was trying to put together a deal to make a documentary film.
I met with Hong Kong and Beijing businessmen. Potential investors in the film. And the Chinese way of doing business was a thing of beauty.
And familiarity.
Old pals getting together, each ole boy helping the other so that when he needed it he’d get helped in return.
We’re talking sit-downs with wealthy, powerful men. Fine food. Fine wine. And, in one case, foot massages and even earwax cleaning at a Mainland China spa.
The meetings all began with inquiries into the health of the participants and their families, followed by lots of reminiscing about “back in the day” and the shaking of heads about how time slips by. Then Frank would get to work.
“I have a project,” he would say to the potential investor. “I’m putting in $100K U.S. dollars, and I’m looking for nine partners.”
“How many partners do you have so far?” the potential investor would ask.
“Right now it is only me.”
“I’m happy to join you,” the potential investor would say. “And if you find yourself not fully subscribed at the time you need to be, please come back and I’ll take whatever shares remain.”
I’m not kidding. We talked to half a dozen people, and every one of them had the same response.
Without knowing what the project was.
When Frank told them the details, they became even more into it, with ideas about directions Frank could go in. Directions they could go in with him.
They signed on without blinking. Because they knew that within months they’d be looking for partners in a deal of their own and would be having this same meeting—but with themselves in the visitors’ chair making the proposal.
As I watched all this I thought of the conversations I’d seen in Paradise between Uncle Ernie and Jimmy Blue and just about anyone else. The camaraderie and good humor. And the agreements that were made, the business that got done because of the history and trust that surrounds those two good ole boys and their friends.
I remembered when I was a kid and my father told me that the secret of business success lay in understanding the concept of what he called “due bills” (or were they “do bills?”), which boiled down to men who worked with and trusted each other engaging in the fine art of trading favors.
Sitting there in Hong Kong, Beijing, and a brand new city called Shenzhee, I had the feeling that I was watching capitalism at its finest.
In the world’s most successful Communist country.
The Chinese may have some problems with the free expression and acquisition of information, but as I frantically tried to manipulate my chopsticks around delicious dim sum and exquisite Beijing Duck, it came to me that what I was witnessing was something that should make even the fiercest old Cold Warrior rejoice.
The ideological war is over.
Not just with Russia but with China too.
And we won.
Further proof of the victory of capitalism was everywhere. Beijing is an ancient city, and although we saw drably dressed farmers driving donkey carts through its center -We also saw The Forbidden City! And the Great Wall! They’re real! – turns out that like Hong Kong, Beijing in its newer areas is all skyscrapers and department stores and high fashion boutiques.
It’s theaters and flat screen TVs and freeways and boulevards jammed with BMWs, Mercedes, and Jags.
For a week in Beijing, Gwen and I had the unlimited use of a chauffeur-driven Rolls Royce. A new Rolls owned by one of Frank’s friends.
The friend was no government guy or Communist party official. He was an industrialist who apologized for the “glares you might get as you drive along,” but was proud as he could be of the fact that, “You’ll get some wide smiles and thumbs-ups as well.”
See what I mean about winning?
No way we could lose.
Because it turns out that the ancient Chinese attitude toward business and profit is, when you get down to it, just like ours.
