CHAPTER NINE
MIAMI, FLORIDA, USA.
“If you think you can do a thing or think you can’t do a thing, you’re right”
Henry Ford
Since Miami by now had become the gateway for Latin America, Tony decided to move the headquarters office from Los Angeles, California to Miami, Florida and take upon himself the administration of the company as Jack did not want to move to Miami.
July, 1997. Initially Tony sub leased an office with a supplier: NNR Air Cargo, and developed new suppliers and by coincidence his old friend Sylvio Costa, from Los Angeles, was now living in Miami and unemployed. So Tony hired him and started from scratch again!
Sylvio Costa: Was a friend of Tony’s; they had met in Los Angeles. Sylvio had been living with Dominique since her divorce and after they broke up he came to Miami. Somehow Sylvio had been present in Tony’s life many years.
Tony brought Sharon and his son, Harrison, to Florida. He managed to rent an ocean front apartment in Bal Harbour, something that Tony had always wanted. It was a beautiful place with a full ocean view and he made sure before bringing Sharon and his son that everything was done, such as buying all the furniture and appliances. And of course Sharon would get mad, because Tony did everything by himself, but that was Tony.
Even with all the comfort that Tony provided, Sharon hated Miami. She got very upset every time Tony’s traveled and she was beginning to show the first symptoms of depression.
Trying to make up for this, one day as he was walking along Tony stopped in Cartier’s in Bal Harbor and looked at this expensive and gorgeous diamond necklace and earring set. He looked at Sharon and with passion and love in his eyes, he said, “One day, Sharon, when I achieve success, I will give you jewelry like this. I promise.”
Of course, Sharon did not have any idea that her new husband truly meant what he said.
Out of the blue a lot of business appeared and Tony decided to sell the auto parts division, because at the rate the new business was growing he could not keep up with that. The auto parts business was much more difficult, and the competition in that area was fierce.
So Tony asked Ernest in Brazil to get names of the best customer’s reseller of Exbrus that had a good credit profile with the company, and Ernest indicated two names, but one made Tony especially interested. These people would anticipate payment of their bill; in Brazil this was very uncommon, and thus he asked to set up a meeting with them, next time he was in Brazil.
Tony made sure that the meeting was to be held at their office, and when got there, he met the three partners: Rudy Benson, Severino and Jose who owned the business, LineFor Corporation. Rudy was no doubt the leader, and Tony sympathized with him. Their company, though quite small, was very organized and had trained with a well know government institution called SEBRAE, which impressed Tony.
Rudy Benson: Leader of the LineFor Corporation was an excellent apprentice; he is a very good listener, and he followed Tony’s instructions. Tony was impressed by him.
Does luck knock on your door? In this case it did! Tony made a decision to sell the parts division to LineFor; he proposed to sell the whole division, but Rudy insisted that he, Tony, keep 25% of the shares of LineFor Corporation at the time, and Tony agreed.
Following Tony’s ideas and establishing their own brand name, today they are one of the most important auto parts brand names in Brazil. Of course, that was due to Rudy’s dedication.
Unfortunately, later on Blacker would manipulate Rudy to set up a plan to kick both his partners out and later Tony as well. But that is another story!
Tony and Rudy offered Ernest the opportunity to maintain his job at the parts division at LineFor, but Ernest decided to quit and returns to Goiania, Go.
Life goes on and some important episodes follow:
As Exbrus grew and diversified to different areas, Tony saw a unique opportunity with one of the clients, Davie Palumbo, who worked with PepsiCo and Coca-Cola as a provider of promotional material. Tony had a vision to get those clients as well.
Tony and his ideas! In a lunch meeting with Davie he asked him to reveal his biggest dream. As a matter of fact this a constant habit of Tony, asking people he likes about their dreams. He was always trying to help everyone to make it true. He had this concept of seeing happiness thru the eyes of the people he liked. So, Davie replied that his biggest dream was to own a yellow Ford Mustang convertible. That would be about a one hundred thousand dollars value in the Brazilian economy. Tony smiled and said, “I want to help you to make your dream come true, and I have a proposal for you. You help me to get two million dollars in sales from PepsiCo and Coca-Cola and I will give you the car of your dreams.”
Of course he motivated Davie to work for him, and did it very well! So in Tony’s mind, he was not about to worry about money so much but to gain clients such as Coca-Cola and PepsiCo. That alone would be more value than the Mustang.
And sure enough, in a short time the Exbrus Corporation was working with PepsiCo and Coca-Cola in the promotional gift areas only, but Tony’s determination was to be a logistics provider to all areas at both corporations.
The custom order for the Mustang was placed at Ford Motor, and Tony had a very unique experience, sharing the whole process with Davie step by step. Tony initially delivered the car in Miami, and finally after all Customs clearance and licensing he surprised Davie and delivered the car during a lunch at a steak house in Brazil. The car was specially prepared, gift wrapped and sent by a flat bed tow truck. Davie’s face lit up like a child’s at Christmas.
May, 1999. Amanda Lima was born, the first daughter of Tony and Sharon. Tony was very happy to finally have a daughter.
And things were moving at Exbrus. The rock was rolling, and the good times were here! Tony was cautious now; all his transactions were on a cash basis; he did not want any credit, anywhere! But Tony wanted even more, so he hired Marcos Paz to make a business presentation for Exbrus. The company was still small and never had a professional business presentation.
Marcos Paz: He too had been referred by Davie Palumbo; he had been a manager for British Tobacco in Latin America, and had lots of experience in marketing. He initially was hired as a consultant and later on as an officer of Exbrus.
Mr. Lima could not fully manage the Sao Paulo office for Exbrus anymore and Tony needed help. He did not know what to do and every time he remembered his past experiences he would have nightmares.
Talking to lot of people he got a lot of advice that the only way to prevent someone from pulling a fast one on him again, would be: to first hire someone that you have known for a long time, check the background, make sure he is a true friend and give this person a share of the company.
The only person who came to mind was Blacker. He had known him for some time now. Michael Santini had done a background check, and he had personally had some good experiences with Blacker in a few businesses they had together. Blacker’s business, according to him, was not doing well, and he always had debts everywhere. The only thing bad about Blacker was the past transactions with Michael’s wife’s company; but he had managed to get government financing in the amount of ten million dollars for one of Santini’s corporations; this was the type of Brazilian government loan that most people manage to extend up to 15 years and by the time they pay it off, inflation and other advantages makes the loan payoff to be peanuts (Brazil things!).
Even though after this Santini hated Blacker, and would insist that Tony not hire Blacker, Tony nonetheless at this time had full trust in Blacker and did not know yet about his lies and manipulation.
Tony took the time to think it over and finally decided to meet Blacker and made him an offer that was hard to refuse. Tony offered him a salary of one hundred and twenty thousand per year (In Brazil very few companies would pay such high salary to a director) and in addition to that he would give him 20% of the shares of the company to be paid with future profits. In other words he gave him 20% of the company. Blacker would try to negotiate with Tony to maintain his old company, but Tony was very determined. Either you come full time or nothing. So that was an easy decision for Blacker and he accepted promptly.
Well, things were going well and now meetings with customers at Exbrus office in Sao Paulo could not be avoided. The Sao Paulo office was in a very modest area of Sao Paulo, and did not have an acceptable appearance for some kinds of clients, so Tony decided to move the office to a better place. He leased a house in a residential area and converted it into a very high tech office, for the administration and sales office. His intention was to be in a very quiet neighborhood, so he really wanted to keep it low profile. After the move, the neighbors started to complain, as this location was not supposed to have offices, and the neighbors got very tough, even taking the case to the local courts. He also hired Carlos Costa as an export manager for Exbrus.
Carlos Costa: He was hired initially in Brazil to be the export manager for Exbrus; later he became the Director of the Chile operations. A loyal, hard worker, he was without a doubt one of the best employees ever hired to work at Exbrus.
Blacker got in the middle of this challenge, and helped a lot, but with no success.
So Tony decided, after making a major investment in this leased property, to purchase an office building and to rebuild it according to his needs in a proper business location. They found a place, purchased it cash, hired an architect, Ed Peroba, and started the construction.
Ed Peroba: He was the architect who had followed Tony with all of his construction projects, even in the USA. He was a very good professional and a friend of Tony.
But time was something that he did not have; he had to move from the old office quickly. The situation reminded him of Exbrus’s slogan: “If it’s Fast! It’s Exbrus!” That was so much like Tony - since childhood everything he did had to be fast. And it was no different at Exbrus.
They had to work day and night since the architect specialized in this type of jobs and they targeted it for completion in 90 days.
Blacker showed himself to be a professional. One of the first things he accomplished was to bring PepsiCo to work with Exbrus at full range (all departments). He also managed to do the same thing at Coca-Cola. He also got to be good friend with the Coca-Cola buyer, Manny Green.
Manny Green: He had been working with Coca-Cola for over ten years and had built a reputation. Tony liked him very much; he was a nice down to earth person and of course he helped Exbrus to get lot of business with Coca Cola even in other countries.
Tony was happy! Things couldn’t be better. Business was fantastic; he already had moved to Coral Gables, Florida, and he had purchased not one, but two houses which valued over a million dollars.
Sharon was now is going through a postpartum depression, and nothing made her happy; she was going to treatment with psychologists and to make things worse, she also got very jealous of Tony, because she suspected that he was going out with a lady responsible for purchasing at PepsiCo.
But, Tony never had the intention, or in fact did anything, with this lady, all he wanted was the PepsiCo business; he knew if he ever had any affairs, it would make things worse, not better. So, this whole thing was created by Sharon’s mind. Tony never had an affair with this lady.
In addition, in Sao Paulo Mr. Lima upset Tony because of his way of doing business. He was in charge of Finance, but he never does things on time, he is always late, and the bills are never paid on time, not because of lack of money, but because of his poor business habits. Blacker saw the opportunity and offered Tony the job of handling Finance as well; it would be no problem for him and that was so simple. And no need to say that he was fantastic at doing the job; in the first years he would go through every little detail with Tony, gaining his full trust. He would make account for every penny.
I believe that Tony’s biggest mistake was to trust people too much. President Reagan used to say: trust, but verify! And I guess Tony needed this advice at the time.
Tony never worried about money; this was something that came to him, and not the other way around it. He didn’t believe that people could rob him, although in the past he had some bad experiences, but now nobody was taking money from him.
Of course, Mr. Lima got very upset with Tony when he was transferred from the Finance Department to a counselor in the company. He also was disappointed because Tony had given a part of the business to Blacker and nothing to him.
Now you have to understand Tony’s perspective. For him family was all the same, it would be no different for him. All of those things belonged to the family, and family for him was: Mr. and Mrs. Lima, Sharon, his children, Sandra and Richard. It never crossed his mind to give a share of the company to his father, because he thought everything belongs to the family, and on top of it all Mr. Lima could take whatever he wanted, at any time, and many times Tony had asked Mr. Lima if he wanted some money to acquire anything. Tony never had any secret from his father and always shares liberally all with him.
Ninety days went by and Peroba honored his word and finished the project. Of course, Tony had put on a lot of pressure to make sure it happened. This was a very high tech office. As a matter of fact, at this time I believed that in Brazil, similar offices would be hard to find. Tony spared no expense; he got the best available in the USA and brought it over. Even today this is still is one of the most high tech offices of Sao Paulo, right down to its custom detail. And to make sure everyone was aware of the new office he had a grand opening and invited all of his clients and suppliers. He displayed some of the high tech equipment like the video-conference room, the likes of which few had seen. He had a video-conference with the Miami office at the opening which, amused everyone.
And business was still growing every day, hiring new salespeople, new offices in Vitoria, (state of Espirito Santo, Brazil), Itajai (state of Santa Catarina), Curitiba (state of Parana) and Arica (Chile) and of course new clients such as Komatsu, Nestle, Mazda and Visteon, among others.
About this time Tony had heard from Davie Palumbo about a social project of his.
It was an orphanage in Sao Paulo maintained by his corporation. The orphanage was a brilliant idea, Tony thought when he heard this from Davie so he set up a goal to do the same thing Davie had done. Already, every year it had been his pleasure to dress as Santa Claus and give away toys to the kids of this poor neighborhood of Jaguariuna. Having his own orphanage would be a great idea.
Later he met a lady in Jaguariuna, Kate Garden, who managed her own orphanage in the town; Tony liked her very much and decided to adopt the orphanage, just like Davie Palumbo had done in Sao Paulo.
Kate Garden: Her nephew was married to Tony’s cousin; she came from a wealthy family from Guaira, SP and had dedicated her whole life to helping children in Jaguariuna. She had sold everything she owned to build the orphanage in Jaguariuna. Tony was very impressed with this attitude and tried to make all her dreams come true.
Tony also acquired a real estate commercial building in Miami for Exbrus’s office.
He paid cash for it (five hundred thousand dollars); finance would not make part of his vocabulary. He also acquired a residential real estate in Coral Gables, at one of the best condominiums in town for one and half million dollars, also paid by cash. And he decided to tear the house down and rebuild it.
Marcos Paz was hired as an International Director to work at the Miami office. Tony was very impressed with his work during at the Hanover Logistics Fair in Hanover, Germany, where Exbrus was an exhibitor. Marcos was a good fellow and had a perfect synchronism with Tony.
Next big step: Tony decided to duplicate the concept he created in South America to other parts of the world. The concept he created, which until now had no name, was: to manage the entire logistics process, where Exbrus would purchase the goods, would handle all the transportation, pay for all duties at the destination country, and deliver it to the door of the ultimate client. And the client would only pay after receiving all goods! This was paradigm; no one ever had done it before. (It puts one in mind of the Star Trek slogan: Where no man has gone before). It was the best of the two worlds, on one hand the supplier would gets his money in advance, or a guarantee of it and the exporter would only pay when the goods were in his hands. And on top of that Exbrus would give a fixed price and a fixed time of delivery for each project. It was unbelievable; people could not believe this process when they heard it for the first time!
Tony, since childhood, had been a visionary man, and really believed that Exbrus would grow some day to be a larger corporation such as FedEx, UPS or DHL. He hired a consulting company to do its first business plan; the idea was to bring in venture capital to Exbrus Corporation. Tony believed that he needed one hundred million dollars to do the Exbrus expansion. He envisioned potential sales of a billion dollars annually! That’s what you heard! I believe that Tony went too far. Nobody could see it yet. It was too much money, but Tony never thought this was a crazy idea, because he knew exactly how to do it. And here he goes again!
To understand Tony and his objectives we have to go back ten years. When at the Tom Hopkins Seminar, he wrote down his ten-year goal-setting plan, and he had planned to have a net worth of 3.5 million dollars by this time. Now, try to imagine this: ten years ago when he wrote his goals, he was making about 30 thousand dollars a year, and now he had a net worth of 7 million dollars - that would be impossible for most of people to achieve, so his optimism was not out of thin air. His confidence made him aim high. And what’s more, Tony wrote his next ten-year goal setting a net worth of a billion dollars by the year 2010; that’s right! One billion dollars! In addition to providing jobs for over ten thousand people and being able to help at least one hundred thousand children a year, and after 2010 dedicated 100% of his time to social activities and to help people to achieve their dreams, among others things. This is Tony Lima!
Meanwhile, Sharon got better, went through plastic surgery, and seemed to be happy now. She made lots of friends and finally it seemed that she had acclimated her self to the USA. She got pregnant again and Tony is very happy.
By now Richard was feeling better, and accepted an invitation from his Uncle Frederico and Bryan to establish a delivery business in Brasilia. Tony was happy because Uncle would have a good influence on Richard.
At one of the condominium get togethers, Tony and Sharon met his new neighbor and his wife, Pierre LaCosta and they became good friends.
Pierre LaCosta: He had worked in several banks in Brazil and the USA; he is now building a new house estimated at over ten million dollars. He is well experienced in loans, venture capital and the finance world.
One thing again led to the next and Tony shared his business plans with Pierre, who promptly offered to help. Pierre called a few friends and set up few appointments.
With business plans ready they went to the meeting. Everyone seemed to like the project, but two things would bring their attention: one was that the financial statements were not accurate and Exbrus had a lot of experience in Brazil, but was unproven in other countries. The financial statements were not provided by Blacker, who had all kinds of excuses for not having it done accordingly.
What Tony did not know was that Blacker had set up his own operation in Brazil and was taking money out of the corporation, and of course this idea of bringing someone new to the company, was a really bad idea for him, because with “due diligence” they probably would find out. And that’s why he would change the numbers of the financial records, and Tony had little experience or knowledge of the financial end of the corporation.
After three meetings with different prospects, and after hearing the same comments, Tony decided to start the international operation alone, and later he would search for investors.
Them he opened Hong Kong, Chile, Mexico and also authorized Blacker to acquire the license of a bonded warehouse at the port of Arica, Chile.
Tony discovered Hong Kong and loved this city; there he felt alive, and there in some inexplicable way he was re-energized.
Tony brought Sharon, who was pregnant, to Hong Kong. During the flight Sharon got panicky and very sick. When they arrived in Hong Kong she couldn’t sleep, she would cry and vomit, so Tony called a doctor and she went to the local hospital where she ended up staying for three days. Nothing seemed to make her better. So Tony resumed the trip and brought her back to Miami and again on the flight back she had the same thing. After that episode Sharon would be very scared to fly again. She required a sedative during each flight.
Sandra Lima, Tony’s sister, after having a baby girl, got divorced and moved from Los Angeles to Sao Paulo. She went home to live with her parents and started to work at the Exbrus office in Sao Paulo.
July, 2001. Tatiane Lima was born – second daughter of Tony and Sharon. Again Tony was thrilled with the new baby!
Uncle Frederico and his son Bryan decided to move from Brasilia to the city of Uberaba, state of Minas Gerais, Brazil, where they were going to establish a hotel resort. They wanted to sell the courier business, which they started, to Richard in Brasilia, so Tony talked his uncle into selling to Richard at whatever price he could afford and he would pay the difference of the total investment. Richard was not to know about any of this guaranteed payment. Tony wanted to make Richard feel capable and keep the business for himself.
The relationship with Sharon was going very bad, again. Sharon was depressed and after several disagreements with Tony started to lose control.