Offbeat Business Deals

Sometimes the best business transactions take place in unusual places and unexpected circumstances
By Sheryl Smith-Rodgers

Typically, the scene plays like this: a circle of CEOs, bankers, and attorneys gather in a corporate meeting room, sign a stack of legal documents, then shake hands after officially “sealing the deal.” Maybe a photographer even snaps a picture for the media.

While that’s how many individuals conduct business around the world, for others the reality is quite different. Sometimes contacts are cultivated and deals are landed in strange places or under unusual circumstances.

Take Dr. Tim Hudson, for instance. He remembers back in the 1990s when huge family-owned conglomerates called zaibatsus dominated the Japanese economy. Executives and staff, looking to expand into the global marketplace, were eager to learn English.

As part of his work, Hudson (then the dean of International and Continuing Education at the University of Southern Mississippi) often traveled to Japan, where he marketed the university’s English-training courses to business people there.

During one visit to Tokyo, he sealed a deal in a rather offbeat place.

“After a day of formal presentations, we ended up in a karaoke bar that specialized in country-western music,” Hudson recalls. “It was very informal. Japan is a lot like Texas in that business relationships are built on personal trust. That night, we participated heavily in their culture and came to know one another as individuals.” 

After a round of off-key — but very enthusiastic — singing, he and his Japanese business associates were ready to sign a deal. Trouble was, they had no paper to sign. So one of the club’s waiters offered his hachimaki (cloth headband) instead.

“We signed it with a black Sharpie pen, and that sealed the deal,” says Hudson, now the president of the University of Houston-Victoria. “We never had a moment’s trouble with the relationship because we shook hands and showed respect for each other’s culture.”
And the hachimaki? What became of that?

“A year or so later, I returned to Japan and asked my colleague if he still had the scarf,” Hudson says. “He answered ‘yes,’ he’d kept it as a souvenir!”

As Hudson’s funny experience illustrates, not every corporate deal comes together at a polished conference table. Sometimes, big business starts with small talk at a local bistro or laid-back bar. Case in point: the legendary birth of Southwest Airlines.

And legendary, it is. The story goes that attorney Herbert D. Kelleher and client Rollin W. King in 1967 met for drinks at the St. Anthony’s Club in San Antonio. There, Rollin supposedly doodled his idea – a new airline route connecting Houston, Dallas and San Antonio – on a white cocktail napkin. Four years later, Airline Southwest (which later become Southwest Airlines) booked its first commercial flights. And the rest, as they say, is aviation history. 

As for the immortalized napkin, in recent interviews with the Dallas Morning News (May 16, 2007) and Southwest’s in-flight magazine (Spirit, June 2006), King flatly says it just doesn’t exist.

Officially, Southwest is a bit iffy on the matter. On its Web site the airline states that King and Kelleher “jotted down a plan for a short-haul airline.” On the same Web page, it goes on to reference the anecdote as “company legend,” right next to a photo of “the napkin.”

Whatever the case, hundreds of cocktail napkins – not to mention a fair number of matchbook covers and bar bills – have played key roles in the humble beginnings of countless corporations.

In fact, the now defunct American Corporate Hall of Fame in 1999 exhibited 1,215 cocktail napkins on which people scrawled thoughts and plans that led to business deals.

Charley Pemberton farms lavender in Blanco, Texas, with his wife Ganell. He remembers how an afternoon at a bar – minus doodled-on napkins – later led to a successful rice venture back in the late 1950s.

“We met at a bar and talked about our mutual interest in Costa Rica,” recalls Pemberton, then an investment counselor with Merrill Lynch. “My partner, who was also a close friend, had a rice farm in Beaumont, and we both agreed that we wanted to explore the idea of rice farming in Costa Rica.”

A few weeks later, the two men arranged a lunch meeting at a fancy Houston restaurant – George Dentler’s Pier 21 –  with a landowner from Costa Rica and the Costa Rican consul.

“We ate and talked business, but we didn’t finish so we stayed and had a few afternoon drinks,” Pemberton recalls. “Before we knew it, it dinnertime! So we ordered dinner and kept talking. Then we had more drinks. Before long, the waiter came and told us they were closing. It was nearly midnight!”

The 12-plus hours in a posh seafood establishment paid off.

“We closed the deal there, and it turned into a wonderful adventure,” Pemberton says. “For more than six years, our partnership – Los Cuatro Arroceros – irrigated 1,000 acres in Costa Rica. We farmed rice and sold it to the agricultural agency there called the Consejo Nacional.”

Talk about adventures. Mike Rhodes talks business while he’s steering an open-air, safari-style vehicle through rugged habitat in South Texas. While this may be an unorthodox environment for making deals for most people, it suits him perfectly as the president of Rhodes Enterprises Inc. and developer of Bentsen Palm Development in Mission, Texas.

“I give three-hour tours on Wednesdays of Bentsen Palm Development, which is a 2,600-acre master-planned conservation development,” Rhodes says. “It’s adjacent to Bentsen-Rio Grande Valley State Park and the North American Butterfly Association’s International Butterfly Park. Riding in our vehicle gives guests the chance to feel the breeze and look at the birds and wildlife while learning about this unique conservation development. We sometimes see javelinas and bobcats, and on occasion we’ve spotted jaguarundi and ocelot, which are rare.”

Rhodes’ GATV (short for Giant All-Terrain Vehicle, he says) has a homemade body that seats up to 12 and is attached to the chassis of a 1989 three-quarter-ton GMC pickup. Prospective clients love it. “Right now, we have a waiting list of probably 200 people wanting to take my tour,” he says.

This offbeat approach to doing business behind the wheel (while pointing out butterflies and birds) apparently works very well.  “Out of the 240 or so who’ve gone this year, at least a third of our guests have bought in our development,” Rhodes explains.  “Some are ready to sign earnest contacts as soon as we get back to the office.”

“Unusual” and “expected” best des-cribes a morning chat San Antonio businessman Joe Linson had in his office that turned into a major career change.

In 2001, Linson headed the Alamo City Chamber of Commerce as its president. That same year, Hunt Construction Group in Dallas landed the contract to build the $200 million SBC Center (now called the AT&T Center, and home of the San Antonio Spurs).

Mark LaVoy, Hunt’s executive vice president, needed a professional in San Antonio with extensive contacts in the city’s small-business sector to help ensure subcontracts were spread out fairly in the community.

“My name kept coming up, so Mark called and asked if we could talk,” Linson recalls. “He came to the chamber around 10 in the morning. We sat in my office, drank some coffee, and shot the breeze for a little while. Then he told me how he needed someone to lead a small-business minority outreach program for the project so everyone would have a fair shake at competing for the work.

“He asked if I was interested in the job, and I said ‘yes.’ Then he asked what it would take to hire me. I wrote down a figure on a piece of paper, and he wrote down a figure on a piece of paper. Then we exchanged papers. He looked at his and said, ‘Let’s do it!’”

That day, Linson gave his two-weeks notice to the chamber and went straight to work for Hunt. The two-year job ultimately led him to his current position as president of WOW Cafe and Wingery, a franchise-chain of Cajun-style, “family casual” restaurants. He also heads a number of food service, catering and restaurant businesses that operate in the Alamodome, the Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center, and the San Antonio International Airport.

“It was the best decision I ever made because it opened a whole new world for me,” Linson says. “Plus, it put me in a position where I was able to help people and partner them in the project. In total, 35 percent of the project [work] went to businesses owned by women, Blacks, Hispanics and Asian contractors in San Antonio.”

Whether business happens in an offbeat place or unexpectedly over coffee, Linson says there’s a lesson to be learned through his own experience.

“You never know when an opportunity to do good for yourself and others will present itself,” he says. “So it’s important to keep an open mind, listen, and then take that opportunity when it comes.”