Chương 10: Growing Pains

We were growing fast. Maybe not fast enough for my ambitions, but steadily. Expanding, strengthening, taking new markets. To become a truly serious player, one that stood firmly on its own feet, we first had to push channels open everywhere and get the company's internal work into proper order. People were already running themselves ragged, and further growth without strengthening the structure would simply break everything. I wanted to move on to the new project as soon as possible.

It was a serious step into a new field. But I understood the company wasn't ready yet. We needed money. We needed people. We needed a proper base for the next explosive leap. So I buried myself in work completely. The next few months turned into one long blurred smear of meetings, negotiations, presentations, and signed papers. I practically forgot what it was like to sleep at home. The little couch in my office kept replacing my bed. Thank God for James. As always, he kept the situation under control.

Organized constant access to the showers, brought fresh towels, soap, shaving supplies. One morning, he caught me shaving over a sink at four in the morning. He sighed, but didn't argue. Just brought coffee and a folder with the day's schedule. Within New York and the nearby states, information about our products spread well enough. Word of mouth worked, newspaper ads worked too. Manufacturers called us themselves, arranged meetings, asked for samples. But beyond that, things turned into a pain in the ass.

There was no internet in the seventies. No e-mail, no instant communication. Information crawled at the speed of a dying snail. A manufacturer in Texas could spend months not knowing about a product that was already selling like crazy in Massachusetts. And even if he did hear about it, it would be third-hand, through rumors, distorted retellings, and nonsense that would barely interest him. We had to act actively. Enter the markets ourselves, offer the product ourselves, convince people ourselves.

And that was where the problem appeared: many potential partners refused to negotiate with anyone except the head of the company. Corrigan could be a sales genius, but when it came to licensing contracts worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, factory owners wanted to see the person who made the decisions. They wanted to personally feel out the new player and the man who would sign the papers. Me. That was how I became a traveler, without particularly wanting to.

I had to constantly run around the country: Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston, Detroit, Dallas, Los Angeles, San Francisco. Sometimes two cities in one day. Morning flight there, evening flight back, with a meeting in between at a local manufacturer's office or in a restaurant, if the man wanted to discuss business in an informal setting. I answered the same questions. Used the same arguments.

Showed the same samples: yellow notepads that stuck and unstuck dozens of times without losing their properties, reflective patches that flared bright under a flashlight.

"Imagine how much money this will bring you," I told the owner of a factory in Texas.

"The patches will be bought by everyone, especially loving parents, and that gives the product almost unlimited potential. On top of that, it's excellent reputational investment."

"And if competitors copy it?" he asked suspiciously.

"A patent fence of twenty-three patents," I answered calmly.

"We already crushed one competitor in court. A second tried to release a cheap copy, but the quality was so pathetic that his product only emphasizes our superiority. Let him exist. It helps us." He nodded slowly, thinking it over.

"And the terms?"

"Exclusive rights for Texas and Oklahoma. One hundred twenty thousand upfront, eight percent royalties. Plus a commitment to invest in local advertising. We'll help with materials, but distribution is on your dime."

"One hundred twenty…" He whistled.

"Pricey."

"You're getting a monopoly on two states with a population of twelve million." I leaned forward.

"No one else will be able to sell SafeGlow in your territory without going through you. Every school district, every police department, every store — all through you. In the first year, you recoup the investment. In the second, you start making real money. By the third, you'll be thanking me for this contract. And besides, we're not exactly beginners anymore. We have options when it comes to choosing who to work with." A pause. He looked at me, calculating the risks.

"One ten," he finally said.

"And I sign today."

"One fifteen, and you get priority on new SafeGlow products when we release them." He smiled.

"Deal." That was roughly how the talks went in every state. The numbers changed, the faces changed, the cities changed, but the essence stayed the same. Convince, negotiate, and leave happy with a new contract. I was glad we were building a huge client base. The company's connections multiplied. Its reputation strengthened. But all of it cost me sleepless nights, constant flights, endless tension. Success, they said. You'll be rolling in it, they said.

I thought that by this stage I was supposed to be lying in expensive beds and eating lobsters. Apparently, I was some kind of defective businessman. By the end of the sixth month, the results were impressive. Stick-It was being sold in forty-two states through twenty-six licensed manufacturers. SafeGlow in thirty-eight states through nineteen. The total amount of upfront payments had passed two and a half million dollars.

Royalties brought in another three hundred thousand dollars of net profit every month, and kept growing. Huge money. I poured it into the staff and the company. Prescott hired people by the batch. I also gave Jacob approval to expand security. I wasn't sure we would be left alone for long. With growth like that and money like that, attention was inevitable. And not only positive attention. But for now, everything was going according to plan.

Then we started feeling out foreign markets and immediately realized we had stepped into a swamp. Canada seemed like the logical first move. Close, same language, similar culture, minimal trade barriers. But even there everything turned out to be more complicated than I had expected. Canadian manufacturers looked at us cautiously. An American company without a local office? Without registration under Canadian law? Without understanding local specifics? Most politely refused even to discuss contracts.

Too many legal risks, they explained. Too many unknowns. We had to start with the foundation. Jennings spent two weeks studying Canadian corporate law, requirements for registering foreign companies, tax rules. It turned out that you couldn't simply sign a contract from the United States. We needed an official representative office on Canadian soil, with all that implied: registration, tax number, accounts in local banks, insurance.

Chen calculated the expenses: at least fifty thousand dollars to open the office, plus seven thousand a month to maintain it. Office, salaries, operating costs. For one country. And Canada was close and friendly to us. But I understood that if we began expansion now, we would be laying the foundation for global growth. In a year or two, when we had more money and resources, we would already have a working structure, polished processes, and experience with foreign markets. Then scaling would be much faster.

I decided not to postpone it. We took Canada into development. The next month became an obstacle race. Stern looked for a legal firm in Toronto willing to handle the registration of our representative office. She found one, but their fees turned out to be twice as high as in New York. The Canadians didn't rush. They demanded a pile of documents, and every piece of paper went through three different offices. Grant looked for space for the representative office. Small, modest.

We didn't need a palace, just two or three rooms for a manager and a secretary. But even a modest space in Toronto's business district cost insane money. In the end, we found something acceptable on the edge of downtown: two thousand a month for forty square meters. Prescott looked for a manager to head the Canadian direction. We needed someone with experience in the paper industry, knowledge of the market, connections with local manufacturers, and preferably French. There weren't many such people.

The ones we found were either already employed or demanded salaries higher than I wanted to pay. Their asking numbers looked more appropriate for some government official, including his under-the-table income. In the end, we got lucky. One of our potential Canadian partners, a factory owner named Robert MacDonald, recommended his former sales manager, Douglas Fraser. Forty-two years old, twenty years in the industry, bilingual, with a good reputation and extensive connections.

He had left after a conflict with the factory's new management and was looking for work. I interviewed him by phone, then flew to Toronto for a personal meeting. Fraser turned out to be a calm, competent professional without unnecessary ambition. He didn't need a top-management career. He wanted stability, a decent salary, and work he understood. An ideal candidate. I offered him forty-five thousand a year plus bonuses from contracts. He accepted without bargaining.

By the end of the month, the Aegis Enterprises office in Toronto was officially registered. The office was rented. The manager was hired. Bank accounts were opened. Now we could work with Canadian manufacturers on equal footing. Fraser took to the job energetically. He contacted MacDonald's connections, started calling factories, organizing meetings. I flew in twice more for key negotiations where the owner's presence was required. The first contract was signed with MacDonald's own factory.

Ninety thousand upfront, six percent royalties, exclusive rights for Ontario. Less than in the U. S., but Canada's market was smaller too. Demanding American numbers from them would have been stupid. The second contract was with a manufacturer in Vancouver. West Coast, different specifics, different terms. Seventy thousand upfront, five percent royalties, exclusive rights for British Columbia.

The third was in Montreal, French-speaking Quebec, where Fraser turned out to be worth his weight in gold thanks to his French. Eighty thousand upfront, six percent royalties. After that, word about the product spread and interest grew. Fraser started drowning in work, and I gave him approval to expand the staff. Once he pulled in a few of his old acquaintances, my personal involvement was no longer required.

By the end of the quarter, we had five active contracts in Canada, almost three hundred fifty thousand dollars in total upfront payments, and around thirty thousand in monthly royalties. Not enormous money, but stable. More importantly, we had proven that we could work abroad. Canada was hard, but it worked. Inspired by that success, I decided to try Europe. And that was where reality slapped me across the face. I called one of the largest paper mills in Great Britain.

Introduced myself, described the products, offered a meeting. The secretary listened to me with British politeness and informed me that the company did not work with small American firms. They cooperated only with proven partners who had significant presence in the European market. Translation: you're too small for us to bother with. I've never heard of you, and my boss doesn't care. Europeans did not want to deal with an unknown American company.

Without a local office, without reputation in their markets, without understanding local specifics, without connections, we were nobody to them. I sat in my office, looking at a contact list crossed out with red marker, and understood that this would require serious and long-term investment. Everything was more complicated there: different countries, different languages, different jurisdictions, different business cultures.

Opening a representative office in London meant at least one hundred thousand dollars at the start, plus fifteen thousand monthly. Multiply that by France, Germany, Italy, if you wanted to cover the key markets. Half a million dollars minimum. Plus six months to a year building reputation before serious players even began approaching you. This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon. I didn't have that kind of money.

Two million in upfront payments sounded impressive, but most of it had already been allocated: laboratory, office building, staff expansion, operating costs, emergency reserves, and money for the new project. Full European expansion simply exceeded our current resources. But I wasn't going to abandon the idea completely. I called Jennings in and told him to create a new department. International. A department for foreign markets.

For now, it would include only Canada and Fraser, but the structure had to be built so it could expand later. Europe, Asia, Latin America — in perspective, when money and resources appeared. I asked him to start studying the requirements for registering companies in Great Britain, France, and Germany. Patent law, taxes, licensing procedures, legal firms we could hire there. Gather information, prepare the ground. When the time came to act, I wanted to move quickly.

I gave Prescott the task of searching for candidates to lead the international department. Someone with experience in global trade, knowledge of languages, and understanding of different jurisdictions. Such specialists were rare and expensive, but without them there was no breaking into Europe. I told him not to limit the search to the States. All of this was a long game. For the most effective absorption of the market, we would have to do a colossal amount of work. You can't jump into every country at once.

You move methodically, step by step, country by country. First Canada, where we had already established ourselves and were refining the process, gaining experience. The next step would probably be Britain, as the closest culturally. Then the second, the third. The foundation was already laid. The department existed. The Canadian office was working. The lawyers were studying European legislation. When time and money arrived, we would be ready.

While I ran between New York and Toronto, signed contracts, and built the international structure, the company's staff back home grew by the week. Prescott and his old union men worked tirelessly. New faces appeared every week: accountants to process the growing cash flow, analysts to search for new markets, assistant lawyers to support Jennings, engineers to improve products, chemists for Kozlowski's lab, secretaries, couriers, cleaning staff. Staff growth meant expense growth.

Salaries, medical insurance, office equipment, stationery, utilities. Every new employee meant another two or three thousand a month for the company. But those were necessary expenses. People brought results. Lawyers protected patents, closed contracts, handled competitor claims. Accountants watched cash flow, optimized taxes, prepared financial reports. Analysts searched for new markets, studied competitors, identified opportunities.

Engineers developed improvements for Stick-It and SafeGlow, tested new formulas, prepared the ground for future products. The company was growing not only outward, but inward. Becoming more complex, more professional, more stable. Turning from a startup held together by one man into a real organization with structure, processes, systems. Not wanting to see in my own company the same dull, burned-out faces that had surrounded me at my old job, I invested in corporate culture from the very beginning.

Every employee had to understand what he was doing and why. Not just "filling out forms" or "processing orders," but "helping the company enter new markets" or "protecting our patents from competitors." Not abstract work for a paycheck, but a concrete contribution to a common cause. I tried to remain visible. Not lock myself in the office all day, but walk around, talk to people, explain decisions, ask opinions.

When a major contract closed, I gathered everyone and told them: this is what we did, this is how much we earned, this is how it affects the company and each of you. When people saw the results of their labor — saw Stick-It pads appear in stores, saw newspapers write about SafeGlow, saw sales grow and new offices open — they became invested. They understood they weren't working for nothing.

And when they saw that their boss stood beside them with bags under his eyes twice as dark as theirs, that he slept in the office as often as they stayed late, that he didn't hide behind secretaries and closed doors, they began to respect and trust him. Unity grew naturally, without pressure. Of course, there was exhaustion. By the end of the workday, people's faces looked worn down. We were all working at the limit. But there wasn't that dull, hopeless expression of endlessly repeated meaningless actions.

There wasn't the apathy of gray office rats who arrive at nine, leave at five, and hate every minute in between. People knew what they were doing. They knew why. And most importantly, they knew they could grow. I made internal promotion a rule from the very beginning. If a management position opened, we first looked at our own. Who showed results? Who demonstrated initiative? Who could handle new responsibilities? Prescott started as a recruiter. Three months later, he became head of personnel.

Wesley was a simple assistant. Six months later, he coordinated my work better than any professional secretary and was paid accordingly. One of the junior accountants, Thomas Lynch, became Chen's assistant after four months because he showed that he could do more than count numbers. He could see patterns. People noticed. They understood that here, you could climb. Not through connections, not through ass-kissing, but through results. Work well, show what you can do, and you will be noticed.

It created healthy competition. Not backstabbing and office warfare, but the desire to be better, learn faster, achieve more. Aegis developed a real corporate culture. Not one written in pretty brochures, but alive and real. People helped each other because a colleague's success was the company's success. They stayed late not because they feared reprimand, but because they wanted to finish the project. They were proud of where they worked. That was worth a lot, so I didn't skimp on bonuses.

Of course, the system wasn't perfect. Sometimes incompetent people got hired. No interview gives a one-hundred-percent guarantee. But once they landed in an environment where everyone around them worked quickly, effectively, and with enthusiasm, those people either pulled themselves up or left on their own. I remember one accountant who came from a large corporation. He was used to working slowly, by instructions, nine to five, no initiative.

After two weeks at Aegis, he sat in my office and said he couldn't keep up. The pace was too fast, the demands too high, the colleagues too active. He submitted his resignation. I didn't try to keep him. But there were other cases too. A young lawyer, Peter Holmes, came to us after failing to get into a major firm. Little experience, even less confidence.

But when Jennings gave him a patent dispute to handle, he buried himself in it for three days, dug through a mountain of documents, and found a precedent that closed the case in our favor. He bloomed in a month. From an uncertain newcomer into a competent specialist. Or Margaret Simmons, a secretary in the legal department. Quiet, unremarkable, diligent. Jennings accidentally saw how she organized his documents, not merely into folders, but into a logical structure, with cross-references and importance notes.

He asked where she had learned it. Turned out she had invented the system herself. Two months later, she was coordinating the work of the entire legal department, and Jennings called her indispensable. There were more and more stories like that. Aegis attracted people not only with salary, although we paid well. Not only with stability, although the company was growing steadily. It attracted them with the chance to be part of something large, growing, successful.

The chance to prove yourself, grow, achieve something. And that worked better than any bonus. By the seventh month since the company's creation, Aegis had grown to two hundred employees. The office on West Forty-Seventh had finally turned into an anthill. People worked in hallways, meeting rooms were used as offices, extra desks were placed in storage rooms. Grant had been looking for a new building for two months and finally found one.

A five-story brick building on the border of Midtown and Chelsea, on Twenty-Third Street. A former textile factory, closed about ten years earlier. Spacious, sturdy, with high ceilings and large windows. The area wasn't prestigious yet: industrial edge, warehouses, workshops, none of Manhattan's gloss. But I remembered that in ten or fifteen years, Chelsea would become one of the most expensive parts of the city. Galleries, restaurants, luxury housing. Real estate would multiply in value.

The building cost three hundred fifty thousand dollars to buy. I signed the contract without thinking twice. It was scary to even imagine what it would be worth in the future. Maybe it wouldn't become our main headquarters, but buying land was one of the areas where I had no problem pouring in money. The building needed serious renovation. Inside, everything was neglected: peeling paint, cracked floors, old wiring, prehistoric plumbing. Factory spaces with bare brick walls and rusty pipes under the ceiling.

It had to be turned into a modern office. Grant hired a contractor, a small construction crew recommended by one of Prescott's union contacts. The foreman, Frank DeLuca, an Italian from Brooklyn, a stocky man of about forty-five with calloused hands and a direct gaze, inspected the building and gave me an estimate.

"One hundred twenty thousand," he said bluntly.

"Wiring, plumbing, floors, walls, painting, office partitions. Plus or minus ten thousand, depending on what crawls out once we start. Three months."

"Do it in two and a half," I answered.

"I'll add twenty percent on top." He whistled.

"In a hurry?"

"People have nowhere to work. I'm afraid in another couple of weeks they'll start suffocating in our office."

"All right. One hundred forty-five thousand, two and a half months. But we'll work around the clock, two shifts. And if unexpected problems show up, don't complain about the noise."

"I won't. Do it." The renovation started the next day. DeLuca's crew worked like clockwork. The morning shift came at six, the evening shift at two in the afternoon. Noise, dust, the smell of paint and fresh wood. Electricians pulled new wiring, plumbers replaced pipes, carpenters installed partitions, painters painted walls. I visited the site once a week to check progress. Every time, DeLuca met me with a report: what was done, what was in progress, what problems had come up. Problems, of course, came up.

They found cracks in the load-bearing walls on the second floor, had to reinforce them. The old wiring turned out to be even worse than it looked, so they replaced it completely instead of partially. Plumbing pipes had rusted through in two places. The estimate crawled upward: one hundred fifty thousand, one sixty, one seventy. I didn't argue. Better to do it properly now than redo it later. By the end of the tenth week, the building had transformed.

The walls were covered with fresh paint in light tones to make the rooms feel larger. Office areas got linoleum floors, cheap but practical. Executive offices and meeting rooms got parquet. New windows, new wiring, new plumbing, new heating system. The factory spaces had become bright open offices with high ceilings, exposed brick walls, and large windows overlooking Twenty-Third Street. The first floor housed reception, the checkpoint, the security room, and a small cafeteria.

In the far wing, isolated from the main flow, we placed a medical room and a rest area for employees. Second floor: lawyers and accountants. Third: laboratories and engineers. Fourth: sales, marketing, analysts. Fifth: management, meeting rooms, and my new office. The move took a week. Grant prepared a detailed plan: who moved where, what went where. Trucks rolled up to the old office one after another, loading furniture, documents, equipment.

Employees carried boxes with their belongings, laughed, joked, complained about the weight. The old office slowly emptied out, turning back into the half-abandoned factory space we had first rented. While the renovation was underway, Jacob didn't waste time. By the seventh month, he had thirty men under his command, all Vietnam veterans. Not everyone was combat personnel. There were drivers, technicians, radio operators, medics.

But all of them knew which end of a weapon to hold, and all of them knew how to work in a team. In addition to thirty active fighters, Jacob placed about ten more veterans in the company: disabled war vets, guys with amputations, burns, injuries that made active security work impossible. He arranged them wherever he could. Reception, dispatch, archive, supplies, courier routes. Some worked as drivers, others as guards at the entrance, others handled documents.

They created a good atmosphere, though I had expected otherwise. Take Kowalski, for example. The same man who had once sold pencils on Forty-Second Street. He lost both legs below the knee, but he possessed a sense of humor so black that coal would have looked pale next to it. He sat at reception in the new building, greeted visitors, answered the phone, and joked so mercilessly that people were shocked for the first five minutes and then adored him.

Once, Eleanor Grant, who hadn't met him yet, entered the building and asked him to call me. Kowalski had a phone sitting right there on the desk, but he put on a serious face and said:"Of course, ma'am. I'll just run upstairs and fetch the boss." And started turning his wheelchair around. Grant froze. Her eyes nearly climbed out of her head when she realized he had no legs. Kowalski burst out laughing.

"Kidding, ma'am. I'll call him now. Sorry, couldn't resist." Grant was stunned at first, then started laughing too. Then she told everyone in the office, the story spread instantly, and became a local legend. After that, people began to understand: yes, these men had been through hell, yes, many of them were broken physically, but that didn't mean they needed to be treated like porcelain dolls. Hiring people like that noticeably raised my reputation in the company, and especially with Jacob.

People saw it: the boss hired disabled veterans, paid them decent salaries, gave them work and respect. Not for a newspaper photo, not for publicity, but simply because he could. Because he had promised. Because he remembered. I learned about the nickname by accident when I heard one guard say to another:"Pops said to be ready by eight in the morning."

"Who?" I asked, not understanding. They exchanged glances, embarrassed.

"You, sir," one of them admitted.

"It's a nickname… well, you know. Because you sort of… look after everyone. No offense meant."

"No," I said, shaking my head and holding back a smile.

"It's a good nickname." Pops. Not "Dad," thank God, and not some cult-leader nonsense. More like the old man of a very strange household: the one who pays for the roof, keeps food on the table, drags idiots out of the gutter, and then complains that all of it costs too much. The wordplay was stupid, but the guys clearly meant it kindly. Something like "our own," "the man who takes care of us," and maybe a little bit "don't make him angry, he'll still make you eat breakfast and go to the doctor."

Considering how many grown men, maimed veterans, stubborn specialists, and half-dead workaholics I now kept moving in one direction, the nickname was unpleasantly accurate. Jacob's men trained constantly. Shooting, hand-to-hand, tactics. Jacob created a bonus system: if he saw someone progressing faster than the others, that man received extra pay. If someone invented a better method, an improvement to security procedure, a new training element, a bonus again. People loved money.

And when money was given not for sitting around, but for development, they developed. He also organized discreet surveillance over key figures in the company. Jennings, Chen, Corrigan, Prescott, Kozlowski, Salazar, Grant, Rutman, James — someone unobtrusively watched over each of them. Not close, not like a bodyguard, but close enough to notice a threat. I wanted to talk to Jacob about reinforcement. Serious reinforcement.

About needing more people, better equipment, maybe an armored car for especially dangerous trips. The company was growing, the risks were growing with it, and I could feel that attempts to apply pressure would start soon. But there was no time for that conversation, because problems of a different kind began.