Perhaps the FEDEX experience and resulting loss of personal credibility had put a bad taste in my mouth for pursuing another corporate gig. Seeing smaller companies operating successfully in Poland, doing international trade, often signing cooperation agreements with large firms overseas, caught my attention. It was for several such firms that I would often personally deliver packages and documents to customers in Warsaw, handing out souvenirs and other FEDEX trinkets as sales incentives to my clients. One such firm, Fresh Aire, run by Artur Liebhart, was of special interest. Documents from Russia, Africa, the US, and Canada made their way to the small home-based office just off of ul. Nowy Swiat (New World Street), an exclusive shopping district of Warsaw.
Artur, and his young American friends were always filled with excitement over the projects and deals they were either making or wanted to make with people and firms all over the world. I was first introduced to Artur as the co-author of a guidebook of Warsaw and I knew that the team of Americans he was surrounded by were in the middle of assembling other guidebooks to cities throughout Eastern Europe and Russia. During my first visit to their mostly unfurnished condo office, my attention was immediately arrested from the chaos and noise of the men all talking at the same time with each other to the three beeping and squealing fax machines running non-stop...24 hours a day...both sending and receiving. "What, pray tell, could these three young men be into that the world was calling with all it wanted and had to offer them?" I thought to myself. Contracts, request for quotes, request for offers, quotes, offers, specification sheets, product quality reports, material descriptions, letters of credit, confirmations of all kinds, shipping instructions, photos of products, and a dozen other types of trade and contract documents for what seemed to be every type of product, animal, precious metal, strategic material, vehicle, military weapon, and food possible on the planet.
During that first meeting, I showed up in my FEDEX courier outfit to catch the Fresh Aire team off guard a bit. They all knew I was the big boss and assumed I was above anything like delivering packages in delivery boy outfits. Artur, Toby, and their latest sidekick, the very New York and very Jewish friend, Nick, bust out loud laughing when they saw me and did so again when I started giving them their FEDEX model planes, T-Shirts, hats, courier bags, and pens. Bribery...large and small...was everything...even with young Americans and Poles in Poland.
The laughter was short-lived though as all three returned to a heated argument about the tour guidebook business. All three were talking at the same time again telling each other how the upcoming St. Petersburg book should be done and who was going to do it. After about 20 minutes of this verbal free-for-all, Artur put his hands up and shushed the other two Americans and said, "Jesus Christ! Billy the FEDEX Man is here! Can we stop for a minute and have a cup of coffee with him?" Nick was the first to be the funny guy and said, "So this Billy can't go over to Nowy Swiat and get a cup o joe on his own? He's gotta interrupt our doin business?" Nick smiled and said he'd make the coffee and Toby left the room. Artur's lovely girlfriend, Agnieszka, went with Nick to make the coffee and I talked about FEDEX, Fresh Aire, and guidebooks with Artur.
Toby, dark long hair, nearly two meters tall, and rock star guitarist sort of handsome, was the serious, "do it right and do it according to the plan" guy. That conflicted with his apparent weakness for beautiful women in the middle of big deals which, according to Nick, was the reason he wasn't a 25 year old billionaire. Nick was the hyper intelligent, think out of the box, and "take no prisoners" guy. He also was constantly saying that "they shouldn't pay anyone so stupid as to trust us." Which I thought sounded kind of ominous for me if I was going to be working with them. Nick's stocky frame, close cropped curly light brown hair, and constant laugh...usually at times when others were mortified, made him a bit of a scary character. Artur, a slim, stylishly dressed, scarf wielding, long brown haired handsome man with an unusually long chin that reminds me now of how Jay Leno may have looked in his younger days saw art, opportunity, money, and stardom all wrapped up in Fresh Aire's wide ranging scope of activity. His English was quite good and he could wind poetry into anything he was talking about or describing. Toby and Artur, in business together for about a year, seemed on the outs. Toby was convinced that it was Russia where they needed to be and Nick, the outsider, agreed with him. Nick, working for a famous ad agency in New York, had been seconded to Poland with sound equipment to do some events for high value clients. He had borrowed money to buy the equipment and was now looking for a way to get the insurance money for it...but also keep the equipment. Maybe that's why Nick agreed with Toby that Poland was going stale and they needed a change. Toby imagined himself in the lobbies of Moscow's prostitute "rich" hotels doing business with the most beautiful women in the world. Nick would use the insurance money to get them set up in Moscow.
After 10 minutes with Artur, Toby came back in and signaled that it was time to start round three of the argument. Artur grudgingly excused himself and followed Toby to another room and the yelling started again. With a better understanding of how Fresh Aire had started from advertising and gone to book publishing with a few side trips into the world of black market deals and now more legitimate trading overseas, I thought I could offer some guidance for selecting a deal or several deals to get involved in and work to make them happen...hopefully getting us filthy rich along the way. Artur suggested I look through their files or piles of paper and see if I saw anything interesting. Alone in the FAX ROOM, I started looking.
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