It’s 7 something pm. I’m at the Chicago O’Hare airport. My 6:00 flight was delayed until 8:40 Pm, then delayed again until 10:05 pm. There was an earlier flight, leaving at 9:00, but, of course, it was full. The public address system keeps reminding us that that homeland security has issued an orange alert. Something about the brits M15 releasing information on several London terrorist plots that have been uncovered. The earlier flight that brought me to O’Hare was a harrowing white-knuckle ride through a thunderstorm. The pilot aborted the first landing attempt and came in again after the storm had shifted a bit, and with a new runway to try.
I’m sitting at a table for two at the Chili Grille with a
beer and chips. Nothing else to eat but
chicken and burgers. It’s crowded and I
offer the other seat at the table to a trim 50 something man with white hair
and a white mustache. He tells me he
just got back from Hong Kong. He’s on
his way home somewhere in Florida. Of
course, I have to ask how he’s managed to get over to Hong Kong. It’s business, he says. His business.
He manufactures motor yachts.
They build ‘em in Hong Kong and China.
He’s having ten to fifteen a year being made right now but hopes to tool
up to fifty or so in a year. I ask how’d
he got into the business? He was a movie
producer working on a low budget slasher flick being made with Mafia
money. The cast and crew were perpetually
stoned. They wanted him to burn through
the money so they could get more out of their mafia funders. The “funders” were giving him bum checks,
having their own money issues. One day
he tells both groups, apparently in the same room at the same time, you guys deserve
each other – have at it, and leaves.
He’d been drawing boats since he was a kid. He went ahead and drew another one, and then,
with seventeen thou or so built it. Or had
it built, I’m not sure which. Now he’s
running Island Pilot LLC. Marketing and
Sales, he says. He’s got no back office,
no employees, though he’s thinking about having his son do some of the books. A website, a cell phone, he doesn’t need much
else. He’s got buyers and people to make
the boats, people to fund the process.
There’s no inventory and, with no employees, he can keep what he needs
to know on a spreadsheet or two.
Reuban Trane, the grandson of another Trane who made his
living making, manufacturing, air conditioners.
He’s got a new idea he’s pursuing – hybrid boats that run off of solar cells. A natural for the tropics. Seven knots and seven watts or something like
that. They’ve done some research and
will be rolling out the first production unit within the year.
Reuban highly recommends Hong Kong. A driver meets him and his wife when they’re
traveling together as they de-plane. She
prefers 5-star hotels. The roads are
lined with manicured gardens. Live fish
and geese and, ugh, cats at the better eateries. Reuban can do this stuff like “falling off a
log.” He doesn’t have to think about it
much, making oodles of money with no investment and no real drudgery, short of
the travel, I suppose. Reuban doesn’t
appear to have any sensibilities around class or social justice or even
environmental issues. The hybrid boat
wasn’t about saving the environment; it was about a marketable product. Self assured and confident, cutting through a
livelihood like a hot knife through butter. Oh, sure, he’s had some projects
that tanked, but he’s in his stride now.
What is it that accounts for his success? What lesson is there to learn from his story?
How can I redraw his story, add some
humanitarian elements and the details of my own vision to come up with a story
of my own? One thing, he was open to opportunity. I offered my table and he was on it. Another, he was clear about where he’d been
and where he was going. Little doubt was
voiced. Maybe a bit too much ego, but I
don’t think so. He knew what he did well,
and it aligned somehow with a long standing interest of his. He likely had a lot going for him, grandson
of an air-conditioning tycoon, rich boy playing movie producer, with even a hit
movie now on DVD – the name of which escapes me now – some horror flick if I’m
not mistaken. At the end of his movie
carrier he didn’t even want to see the moving he was making – it was that
bad. There’s money, there’s the
enterprise, and there’s the work you do.
They all need to align. The Chicago
O’Hare PA blares: “The department of homeland security has raised the threat
level to orange.” My 10:05 pm flight has been cancelled. Looking for a place to hang until airport
security opens at 6 am tomorrow.
