Tom

"Tom and Dan were warm, accessible bosses. If you had a problem, they opened their doors to you. If you needed advice, they offered it selflessly. As businessmen, they were intensely focused on managing expenses and increasing earnings, and they surrounded themselves with executives who could work for them forever as long as they adhered to the same principles. They also believed in a decentralized corporate structure. If you stuck to your budget and behaved ethically, Tom and Dan gave you room to operate with independence. Other than a CFO and a general counsel, there was no corporate staff, no centralized bureaucracy, and very little interference with the business units."

"Working with Dan was a wholly different matter than working with Tom. Tom delegated easily, and did not always have time to work directly with me in getting things done. Dan, on the other hand, was involved on a much more granular level. He gave me more demanding assignments as the station grew and he enjoyed jumping into the trenches to work side by side when the need arose. We had great fun tackling a slew of challenges, for while there were signs one might call promising; the facts were that Dan inherited a station with lackluster ratings, meager revenues and spotty reception in many rural areas. Working on those problems with Dan was remarkable. And he took a keen interest in the development of my business management and leadership skills, personal maturation, and even my golf game! Like many who worked with and for him, I never stopped learning from Dan Burke. He also put up with Murph calling me away for special assignments … for a while, that is."

"“Philly, you know you have a job with me regardless … And I know how much you like to fool around with cameras and such, but I have bigger plans for you. If you want to continue filming in your off hours here, that is OK, but if you want to grow with this company you have to consider what I say now carefully. We are building a great company and we are all going to get rich. I want you with us, not 8 hours a day, but 24 and we want you to grow with us, full time, all the time.” When I said I’d like to talk it over with my wife, he came straight back, “I did not hire your wife. I want a decision here and now.” I took a deep breath, got up, reached across his desk, shook his hand and said, “I’m with you, Tom.” “Good,” he said, “Starting tomorrow you have a new job and I’m doubling your pay. You will be the Assistant Promotion Manager.” I am sure my delight was apparent and I said all the right things, but I did add a question: “We don’t have a Promotion Department, and why Assistant?” His response, accompanied by a warm smile, was, “In time, Philly, in time. I don’t want you to get a bigger head than you already have.” Again, what a lucky fella!"

"“Tom,” I said quietly, “I was afraid you were going to say that. I’ve got every knob in this company turned down as tight as they’ll go.” Then my voice started to get louder. “We’ve got people working sixty-hour weeks and getting paid for thirty. We’re working overtime to just get over this hump. And that’s all it is—a hump. dWe can get over it.” I sounded like a gambler with a hot tip. “But if you do this now, it will kill us,” I continued. “It’ll so demoralize everyone. I just can’t continue to run the company if you’re going to do that!” “And so if *you* think *you* can extract this little bit more juice out of the company… here’s the keys to everything.” I pulled my ring of office keys out of my front pants pocket and threw it down on the table in my office. “You run it and let me know how you make out.”"

"I know you care about him. I’ve never seen you like this about anyone, so please don’t take it wrong when I tell you that I believe that Tom, while a very nice guy, is the Devil. What do you think the Devil is going to look like if he’s around? Come on! Nobody is going to be taken in if he has a long, red, pointy tail. No. I’m being semi-serious here. He will look attractive and he will be nice and helpful and he will get a job where he influences a great God-fearing nation and he will never do an evil thing… He will just bit by little bit lower standards where they are important… Just coax along flash over substance. Just a tiny bit. And he will talk about all of us really being salesmen. And he’ll get all the great women."

"At this moment, “enlightened hospitality” was born. In a meeting of the entire staff of Gramercy Tavern, and with full agreement and support from Tom, I began to outline what I considered nonnegotiable about how we did business. Nothing would ever matter more to me than how we expressed hospitality to one another. (Who ever wrote the rule that the customer is always first?) And then, in descending order, our next core values would be to extend gracious hospitality to our guests, our community, our suppliers, and finally our investors. I called that set of priorities enlightened hospitality. Every decision we made from that day forward would be evaluated according to enlightened hospitality."

"*I yelled at Judge, ‘You know it’s a contract, we’ll sue your asses off.’ Then I got hold of Ron. ‘Alan,’ he said, ‘I’m not going to buy. Do what you like, but I’m not going to buy it.’ He knew as well as I that the threat of being sued was better than buying something you don’t want. This left me in a quandary, because I’d spent months walking through Tappenden’s many premises, examining records in the land registry, searching Companies Office files back several years. In those days companies didn’t publish accounts of subsidiaries; big conglomerates would always try to confuse where the money came from. So it was hard to know where the real money was being made.* *Yet it was critical in terms of valuing the company. I’d taken a fitting off my boat to the engineering works in Christchurch, talked to the sales people about a new fitting, got them to show me around the foundry and could tell whether they were busy or not. I’d done something similar in all their businesses. That’s what it takes. If you want a successful takeover, you have to find value where the market can’t see it. More than that, if you have a better idea than the owners or directors of where the value lies in a company, then you can bend them round to getting what they want, while you get the pearls. I knew more about Tappenden’s various companies than its own directors did. So, I thought this is a good deal going wanting. I* *said to Tom, ‘I’ll buy it.’*"

"*I yelled at Judge, ‘You know it’s a contract, we’ll sue your asses off.’ Then I got hold of Ron. ‘Alan,’ he said, ‘I’m not going to buy. Do what you like, but I’m not going to buy it.’ He knew as well as I that the threat of being sued was better than buying something you don’t want. This left me in a quandary, because I’d spent months walking through Tappenden’s many premises, examining records in the land registry, searching Companies Office files back several years. In those days companies didn’t publish accounts of subsidiaries; big conglomerates would always try to confuse where the money came from. So it was hard to know where the real money was being made.* *Yet it was critical in terms of valuing the company. I’d taken a fitting off my boat to the engineering works in Christchurch, talked to the sales people about a new fitting, got them to show me around the foundry and could tell whether they were busy or not. I’d done something similar in all their businesses. That’s what it takes. If you want a successful takeover, you have to find value where the market can’t see it. More than that, if you have a better idea than the owners or directors of where the value lies in a company, then you can bend them round to getting what they want, while you get the pearls. I knew more about Tappenden’s various companies than its own directors did. So, I thought this is a good deal going wanting. I* *said to Tom, ‘I’ll buy it.’*"