1979: Hong Kong or Stanford

Hong Kong was magical. March of 1979. Exotic. Huge hotels along the waterfront. Me running along the bay, on the Kowloon side, in dark blue sweats, in the early morning. The Star Ferry crossing the bay between Hong Kong and Kowloon, amidst big ships, small junks, basking in the view of the peak.

I was in Hong Kong scoping out a transfer from Mexico City to Business International in Hong Kong. Most mornings I woke up early and ran two or three miles along the Hong Kong bay before showering and going into work at Business International’s Hong Kong office. Many of those days I woke up early enough to take the Star Ferry across the bay and run on that side, then take the ferry back.

Hong Kong Star Ferry

I’d been there twice before, as a tour guide (that’s in my story elsewhere here: “1973: Around the World in 31 Days.” Hong Kong was a sensory explosion, the first time, a deep dive into a romantic Asia of movies and dreams, after the relatively tame and disappointing days in Japan. Exotic food smells in the streets. Neon light show at night. A bright shining star among cities.

This time, however, I was there to stay, in theory. Business International was transferring me there from Mexico City. I wanted that transfer badly. I’d worked towards it for two years, negotiating with the Latin America and the Asia group. Then I was there, at Business International’s expense, staying in a hotel, taking six weeks to work with the Hong Kong office, find an apartment, and prepare to move my family.

Intriguing as that scene might be, the real story here started the previous January, in the once-upon-a-time Berry family home at 23260 Eastbrook Ave., Los Altos, CA. I was along in the very early morning doing pushups in the streaming morning sunlight near big glass doors in the living room, when my dad walked in, in a bathrobe, carrying a cup of coffee.

I was up from Mexico City visiting there for two reasons: first, I needed another operation on my nasal polyps, and for that I wanted Dad’s friend Bill Baxter. Second, I was fed up with Mexico City, Business International, and business journalism. I interviewed with the three big San Francisco based banks hoping for a job in international banking. At dinner, the night before, I shared my disappointment: the best interview I had was a straight shooter man who told me I had little or no chance with my journalism background (not business) and without an MBA.

I stopped with the pushups when Dad sat down on the couch and plopped down a copy of the San Francisco Chronicle business page, indicating he wanted to talk with me. I treasured one-on-one talks with Dad.

He showed me that the lead story that day was about the skyrocketing starting salaries of Stanford MBAs. I was making about thirty five thousand dollars a year, working three jobs in journalism. Stanford MBAs were getting hired for $60, $70, even $100 thousand dollars a year, according to that story.

“Dad, I can’t possibly do that,” I said. I was grateful for the thought and made that clear; but it seemed impossible. “Married, three kids, I can’t go back to school.” And furthermore, the story said they were accepting only about one of every 25 applicants. And it was expensive. Stanford.

“I know, I know,” Dad said. “But just do me a favor. Do yourself a favor. Apply for it. What do you have to lose?”

I did apply. I drove over to Stanford that day, got the forms, and filled them in. Over the next few weeks, I did the essays and took the GMAT. I had Notre Dame and University of Oregon send my transcripts. I paid the application fee. But I didn’t have high hopes, because it was so hard to get into Stanford’s MBA program.

From Los Altos I traveled to New York, at Business International’s expense. They were good to me. They arranged business meetings in San Francisco so they could pay my airfare there for my operation. Then they flew me to New York for more business meetings. And I took those New York meetings as an opportunity to wrangle my transfer to Hong Kong, because we were sick of Mexico City. and I’d pretty much forgotten about the pending application to Stanford because acceptance seemed unlikely and the money seemed impossible.

The Hong Kong office wanted me. The work was similar to what I had in Mexico City, business journalism refocused on the information needs of large multinational corporations. I missed my fluidity in Mexico and years of acclimation, plus the language. I was invited to dinner in a would-be colleague’s high-rise apartment. It was small, cramped, unimpressive on the way up, but they did have a gorgeous view of the bay from the inside. I checked out apartments on the west side of the island, where more expats lived. I arranged to buy a used Honda Civic from a man who was being transferred out as I was transferred in. Another colleague invited me for a whole day out on the bay in the Chinese Junk he and his wife leased. We visited two small islands. It was indeed far, far away from Mexico City and the United States. I agreed to buy a used Honda Civic from a Business International expat who was getting a transfer out while I was coming in.

It took two or three weeks for the glamor to wear off. I had wanted the transfer badly, so it was hard to see the downside. But I did, eventually. It started with salary. Business International wasn’t offering me the luxury life of the corporate expat. It was going to be hard to find an apartment we’d like. The private schools were expensive. We wouldn’t have enough money to get off of the island with the kids. The sparkling beauty of it all became cloudy, humid, and oppressive. I was afraid I was making the wrong decision. In Mexico City we had the extended family, Vange’s mother helping with the kids, good times on weekends, and we knew the territory.

Towards the end of my Hong Kong stay, I lived with a persistent knot in my stomach. I’d painted myself into a corner, made a bad choice, and seemingly left no way back. To make matters worse, I was alone with my decisions. This was 1979. There were no cellphones, no Internet, no email, and phone calls even with calling cards were $2 and up per minute. I did not have the benefit of discussions with Vange. I could only guess what she’d want.

When I finally got back home to Mexico City, Vange had been holding a telegram from Stanford. I was accepted to start the next September, 1979.

And thus began a flurry of worry. Meetings, long discussions, lots of stress, all about Stanford vs. Hong Kong. The whole extended family in Mexico City cared and joined in the discussion. We were even invited to dinner at the home of Hans Krombacher, German, head of ITT in Mexico City, boss of Vange’s mother’s boss, the ultimate businessman. Krombacher said go to Hong Kong, get business experience; academia was useless. I asked Luis Orcy, my favorite mentor, US-Phd head of economic studies of the Mexican Central Bank, who said Stanford. The family was divided. Vange and I just didn’t know.

Money was a big deal. I had guessed right on the 1976 devaluation of the Mexican peso, and we’d bet on that by buying a buildable residential lot on long-term payments, in pesos. At the time we thought we were going to stay in Mexico City for decades. But with Stanford, we could also turn that win into about $30,000 of savings. We knew that wouldn’t last; but it could get us started. Once there, we thought, I could set part-time work. I was already working lots of part-time writing things (tourism brochures, advertising) in Mexico City. Maybe we could make it work.

It was particularly hard to not take Krombacher’s advice. I had tremendous respect for Eva, Vange’s mother; and she had tremendous respect for Krombacher. He’d taken ITT in Mexico from also-ran to major corporate player. Eva had watched as he did. She was secretary to his head of marketing, so she had an inside view.

Finally, it came down to two key moments. First, we decided that if Stanford gave us the married student housing on campus at Stanford, Escondido Village, we’d go. Escondido Village meant a two-bedroom two-story town house on campus for $245 per month. Aside from that special situation, rents in Palo Alto were astronomical. And Escondido Village was on the Stanford campus, in a complex made for Stanford families.

Second, it came down to an important moment, for me, with Vange. At the moment of truth, when we had to make a decision, she said: “Let’s take the risk for Stanford. That’s what you want. We’ll take the risk together, and if we fail, we’ll fail together.”

We got the housing. We said yes to Stanford and no to Business International and Hong Kong. We sold the lot. We really never looked back. As I write this, in 2022, 43 years later, I shudder to think of having ever consider Hong Kong instead of Stanford. We made the right choice.

Afterwards:

By June of 1979 we left for Stanford driving our 1975 Rambler station wagon. The picture here below was taken during that driving trip. That was in San Diego, the day after we’d crossed the border into the United States.

A week later, in early July, we moved into 100C Escondido Village. We had a tiny two-story two-bedroom townhouse on campus at Stanford. My classes were walkable. The kids’ nursery school and elementary school were walkable. Stanford was paradise. Skies were blue instead of purple, everything seemed clean and bright, and we all loved those two years at Stanford.

August of 1979. Five cousins on the couch at Escondido Village. Vange’s sister Laura and her sons Raul and Rodrigo came up to visit several times while we lived there. This was their first visit.

—-

I had to absorb anger from people in Business International. The guy whose car I was going to buy in Hong Kong was disappointed. Norman Wellen, CEO of Business International, called me to shout at me. “Why didn’t I tell them I’d applied at Stanford?”

“Because you wouldn’t have given me Hong Kong if you knew that?”

“But we spent money on your transfer.”

“You would do the same thing.”

Norman was furious. But the same week we moved into Escondido Village I started doing market research consulting for Creative Strategies International, in San Jose, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Business International. Norman didn’t block that. And five years later he asked me to become CEO of Creative Strategies International, when founder Larry Wells was threatening to quit. So he got over it.

I worked for Creative Strategies for three years and had a good time there. I kept up with some of the people in Business International, but never had any contact with the Hong Kong office again.

——

For the record, just a few years later, Krombacher killed himself by jumping out of an eighth floor window of the Waldorf Astoria. But that’s a different story. He was in a second marriage after dumping his wife of 30 years, and had business problems.

1979: Forecasting a New Market

(Reposted from timberry.bplans.com. In the summer of 1979, after we had moved from Mexico to Escondido Village on campus at Stanford, while waiting to start the MBA program, I worked with Creative Strategies International as a contract consultant. My last Mexico employer, Business International, owned Creative Strategies and helped me get the contract work.)

In 1979 Creative Strategies International, a high-tech market research company, assigned me the job of forecasting the market for automated teller machines in the U.S.

There were a very few of them already in place at the time. Maybe a few hundred.

I got the numbers as best I could. I found out how many banks there were, and how many branches. I got data for growth in banking customers and growth in branches. I got data for employees in banks.

I talked to dozens of experts. Product managers in companies making ATMs, or companies that could possibly be making them. Lots of bankers, lots of consultants to bankers, several journalists involved in bank-specific trade magazines.

Not all of them wanted to talk to me, but an older and more experienced vice president in the same firm (Tom Arnett was his name) had some good advice (and I’m paraphrasing here, it’s been 30 years):

They have to be interested in what they do, the market they’re in, or they couldn’t get up in the morning.

So hook them in fast. Tell them you’re forecasting the market for Creative Strategies. Tell them you’re thinking the market is going to grow at some percent — it doesn’t matter — but most experts disagree. Make it clear as quickly as possible that you’re going to offer opinions and information as part of the conversation, if they have time to talk to you.

Most of them will. They want to feel like experts. They want to be asked. And they want to know what you’re thinking too.

I used Tom’s advice a lot, and talked to a few dozen experts.

In the end, though, there was not technical or mathematical way to forecast ATMs. At least I was able to relate the projection to numbers of branches to give me some sense of error check, but it wasn’t clear that ATMs would all be in bank branches.

What made the biggest difference to that forecast was the placement of two ATMs at Stanford Shopping Center on the side of the Bank of America branch there. We lived in grad student family housing at the time, and we would ride our bikes over to the shopping center. The ATM was very convenient. It gave me cash fast. It gave me cash after banking hours. I used it a lot.

Most of the bankers told me people would never accept doing business with a machine. They’ll never warm up to that.

Happily, I believed what I saw instead of what the bankers told me. I projected a very fast growth rate for ATMs. As the years ticked off, it turned out I was very close. The forecast I made in 1979 gave a relatively accurate view of the future, given how much uncertainty was there in the system.

Take note, however: it was a human educated guess. The math helped me to compare my projection to the numbers of bank branches, but that was just a reality check. I was guessing.

1974: Jews? Yes, Tomato.

(Reposted from timberry.bplans.com.)

Although it was tame compared to recent years, Israel was very tense in 1974. It was just a few months after the Yom Kippur war. Still, tourism went on. I was a temporary tour guide, in charge of a group of about three dozen people going around the world from Mexico City.

The group was a Mexican group, mostly from Mexico City with some couples from other parts of Mexico. It was an expensive tour so they were economically well-to-do, which in Mexico usually correlates with speaking pretty good English.

Julio Sanchez and his wife Carmen were exceptions. They were from El Salvador and they didn’t speak English. At least they hadn’t spoken English at the beginning of the trip, but during the trip they picked up a lot. Waiters and hotel clerks and people along the day were much more likely to speak English than Spanish. So Julio and Carmen learned how to order meals, and find restrooms, and give taxi directions back to the hotel.

Despite the tension in Israel, it was also Jerusalem, an amazing city to visit, a place people in the group had wanted to visit all their lives. They’d visited the Taj Mahal, Hong Kong, and other splendid places, but Jerusalem was, to most of the group, the highlight. The organized tour went through as many of the main places in Jerusalem as possible — Bethlehem, the Wailing Wall, the stations of the cross — but not the Dead Sea. It was left out on purpose, because of the recent war, meaning tightened security, and more danger.

So it turned out that on the one free afternoon of the stay in Jerusalem, six of my group set out on their own to see the Dead Sea. Normal tours weren’t going there, but they found a taxi driver who, for a fat fee, was willing to take them. I didn’t know until later, but it wouldn’t have been up to me anyhow. They were all consenting adults. I was in charge of tours, logistics, meals, baggage, but not discipline.

They started late. They arrived at an abandoned Dead Sea bathing area late in the afternoon. They had to walk several hundred yards from the parking area and normal beach spot — which was pretty much abandoned — to the water. The taxi waited.

Night fell. They weren’t sure of which direction to walk back to the taxi. They argued. Then suddenly, spotlights, a loudspeaker in a language they didn’t understand. There were military vehicles, people in uniforms pointing guns at them. Angry men, shouting at them and pointing guns, loaded them into a military vehicle. They were driven through the night to a military outpost with a lot of searchlights, and led into a closed room with no windows.

They stood in front of an officer, surrounded by men with guns. There was not a lot of light in the room. The officer asked them questions, angrily, but it was a language they didn’t understand. They could only shrug and shake their heads. What had they done? They couldn’t even ask each other, because the men were angry if they tried to speak to each other at all, and more so because it was Spanish, a language they — the guards, the officer — didn’t understand.

It was at this point — I heard the story a few hours later, in the hotel — that Julio’s newfound English, learned just during the recent weeks of the trip, saved the day.

“Jews?” the officer asked angrily, “Are you Jews?”

Julio’s face brightened. At least, some words he recognized.

“Yes, thank you,” he answered. “Tomato, please.”

They said it took a couple of seconds before the group realized, and started laughing. The tension was broken. The captured tourists, suspected of being terrorists, and the guards, and the officer, laughed together. Both sides switched to English, and understood each other (Julio and Carmen needed help, but they were there with four fellow tourists who did speak English, and the Israeli army personnel all spoke English.)

The taxi was long gone, presumably hoping not to get disciplined for taking tourists to the deserted Dead Sea area at night. The Israeli solders took the tourists back to the hotel. Check points were passed, the story was told, there was a lot of laughter along the way.

So that’s the end of the story. It’s as true as it was when they told it to me that same night, in the hotel bar, where they found me waiting for their return and pretty worried.

This happened in 1974, when I lived in Mexico City and worked with United Press International. We worked six-day weeks at UPI, so we got six weeks of vacation.

And I took the picture here from our hotel, looking across the street, that same day: