Malibu Glenn: In Life and in Business You Just Can't Make This Stuff Up

By Nolan Simmons

Malibu Glenn started his business career even before he realized he’d begun the journey. Beginning with early encounters with the business world serving customers in a neighborhood hardware store to serving “customers” at high school pool parties, Malibu was honing interpersonal business skills with serendipity as he learned how to work with people. College was no exception to this crazy adventure as this hapless goofball earned a college degree that would be the foundation of a formal thirty-seven-year position in the business world. Along the way, Malibu earned many successes and learned from key mentors how to lead teams. In the second half of the story, Malibu shares those lessons, tactics, and strategies that he applied with award-winning, record-setting selling teams. As he likes to say, “winning is that way.” A suggested reading list and a receipt for his favorite cocktail round out the offering.

Hope you enjoy the trip.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Jan 17, 2022
• ISBN: 9781662459337

Book preview

Chapter 1

Serendipity

Growing up in New Orleans your pedigree to other locals is defined by two identifiers, where’d you go to high school and what neighborhood you grew up in. Meeting a native New Orleanian for the first time, either locally or away, will always involve the questions where’d you go to high school? and where’d you grow up. It’s a way for us to measure up another local. It’s not enough, to another local, to say New Orleans, you have to identify yourself with a particular neighborhood such as the 9th ward—upper or lower, Gentilly, Lakeview, Uptown, lower garden district, Irish channel, Carrollton, old Metairie, Metry for a real YAT, Jefferson or God forbid, Arabi or Chalmette. Just kidding, the island paradise of Chalmette is part of my pedigree which includes the upper 9th ward through high school then we moved up to Chalmette during my college years. I met and married my wife of 37 years and moved to her neighborhood of Jefferson; old Jefferson as we call it now.

It happened again just last night. We went to the Roosevelt Hotel to see their lobby decorated for Christmas, and of course enjoy a cocktail from the Sazerac lounge. We managed to wait out the crowd and secured a sofa and two chairs for the four of us. The people watching from our vantage point was exceptional and we were enjoying each other’s company and the sights when a slightly overserved young lady asked if she could share the sofa with my wife and daughter. The young lady was waiting for her parents to come get her since they didn’t want her driving, taking Uber or a taxi. She was sitting not 30 seconds when she felt compelled to make sure we knew what neighborhood she lived in and where her parents lived as well. This led to my wife responding with our pedigree and the game was then afoot. Of course, after you establish the pedigree you then have to learn what restaurants they eat at. This went on for 20 minutes until her parents arrived. When she left, my daughter’s expression was one of amazement. how could you two spent 20 minutes with a stranger talking about high school, neighborhoods and restaurants and you never met her before? I blame the parents for her ignorance of protocol.

The lobby of the Roosevelt as seen thru a mirror featuring from left my daughter’s best friend, the daughter, me and my wife.

I offer this background only to justify my starting with high school.

Chapter 2

High school was different for me, not your usual private school education. When you see or hear private school you think elite solid training. Nothing could be further from the truth. My parents paid good money to send me but the return on investment just wasn’t there. The school was located in the once fashionable Gentilly section of New Orleans at the dead end of a major boulevard. When my parents let me know they had decided to send me to this school I immediately started lifting weights, that’s how bad was its reputation. The physical plant was gray painted concrete building blocks with large aluminum framed windows. The classrooms were as bright as the hallways were dark being lined on both sides with two rows of lockers from end to end. It was easy to see this school was expanded over time as none of the building were of the same design, especially the grade school which literally was housed in a row of old homes bought along the side street of the main school buildings. Said classrooms stretched from street corner to street corner with the former backyard fences now removed to allow contiguous integration with the main campus. This was home for five years.

Starting in eighth grade, most if not all of the other kids knew each other and were already assembled in their clicks. I was a stranger having come from another school that closed. Sitting in my home room just a few weeks after the start of the school year I heard my name coming from the teacher in a less than friendly tone. Go to the board and erase that obscenity! demanded the teacher. What obscenity? My head was buried in work and when I looked up, I saw the teacher’s name, MT, blows. Why was it my job to erase this? I didn’t even know it was on the board. Decision time. I could get beat up after school for being a wimp or I could get noticed in a positive way, depends on your perspective I know, by the in crowd. So, I walked up to the board, picked up an eraser and erased MT leaving blows on the board. A detention seemed like the lessor of two evils and I was now at least acknowledged by the old timers in the eighth grade.

I graduated salutatorian but I never went to math class after ninth grade. I majored in pool management. Yep, the school had an Olympic size swimming pool and the connected crowd’ were given keys to maintain the pool. Located along the long side of the gym and connected by double steel doors and an 8-foot-high page fence, the environment was perfect for shenanigans. To the business minded this was a golden opportunity. During warmer months, which was most months in the deep south, my friends and I would host pool parties at lunch. The filing cabinet in the filter house made for a perfect storage for a sizable collection of booze. Guests" would go to the cafeteria and buy a large punch then head to the pool to stiffen up the drink. We’d order sandwiches (po-boys) from a near-by shop and have them delivered to the back fence of the pool. I’d stand on the roof of the filter house and use the large scoop net to bring the sandwiches over the top. This particular eatery was famous throughout the city for 3-foot long roast beef po-boys. Of course, we’d charge a delivery and set-up fee. The guest list even included a couple of teachers (they didn’t know about the booze but having sandwiches delivered over the back fence was OK) and janitors. For safety purposes we would not invite the bus drivers. This went on throughout my high school career without incident or interruption. This taught me organization, profit margins and loyalty to my friends and business partners. Maybe it was the return on investment?

When the weather was cold and the pool water was freezing, we’d hang a six pack or two by rope from the end of the diving board. The deep water was always the coldest. This was a good example of knowing what the customer wanted to buy. In our case it was COLD beer. Right now, my mother is rolling over in her grave. Sorry. The closest we ever came to the business being in jeopardy was near the end of our senior year. Being 18, I could buy beer legally, so I had provisioning responsibility. This, of course, meant a beer run to the local store. Having access to pool supplies meant having access to 50 gal drums of chlorine. Some of you already know where this is going. One of the guys drove me and an empty drum to get ice and as many Miller ponies as we could fit. The guy driving didn’t have a license, he was too young, but had been driving his parent’s car since he was 14. Obviously, he was the most experienced and best driver. We were a careful group.

We returned to school with a fully loaded barrel of ice and beer. I got a hand truck and started to wheel the cargo to the pool. This meant going through the gym. This is where our strategy almost didn’t survive meeting the enemy. Now at the main entrance to the gym, with my friend and driver nowhere to be seen, I was struggling to open the door and pull the heavy barrel in. To my surprise, the head coach was walking out and offered to help me. I tried my best to convince him I was OK, but he insisted. Together we wheeled the heavy drum, now sweating from the ice and warm temperature, across the gym, through the gates and around to the filter house. To this day I still wonder if he knew since it’s really not normal behavior for a barrel of chlorine to sweat.

Before we leave high school, I have two stories that you just can’t make up. I’m not using real names, but I assure you these are true in every other aspect. One of my classmates who struggled with the academic rigors, stop laughing, of my high school graduated with our class and we promptly lost touch with him. This was before Facebook. He came back into our lives through the pre-Facebook medium of the local newspaper. The article recounted how my classmate got a taxi to bring him to a bank and had the taxi wait for him. While the taxi was parked, the taxi driver heard the alarm and saw folks running from the bank. The driver left—without my classmate or the money he just stole. So, what does my classmate do? He stands there looking for his taxi giving the police enough time to pull up and offer him a ride. Like I said, you just can’t make this up.

The second story starts in high school but ends with me sitting in a bar near the college I attended. Of course, it was a pool hall, but the food was really good and cheap. Sitting at the bar, an old friend from high school enters and I ask him to sit. We were good friends in high school, and I enjoyed his company but like so many others, we just lost touch. He gives me a warm hello hug and we start talking. How’s your mom and ’em was the usual greeting for friends and we talked for just a few minutes. I offer to buy him a beer, remember it was legal to drink at 18 back then, but he responds, I can’t stay too long; I left my car running outside and I’m just getting a quick sandwich to go. I asked him why he would leave his car running and he looked at me with a puzzled expression announcing in a matter-of-fact tone, I just stole it and I don’t want to turn the motor off.

Never saw him again, but I did hear he spent some time at the gray bar hotel. I miss his wild bushy hair and always smiling face.

Chapter 3

Back to the story line,

It was during high school that I started my first real job, working in an old hardware store in the By-water area of town. No idea why the neighborhood is called By-water other than possibly it’s adjacent to the Mississippi river. The store was in an old building circa 1900 with wooden floors that creaked with every step and big picture windows on both sides that faced the street. The entrance, like the other buildings that occupied the corner of Piety and Burgundy (pronounced burr-gun-de not like the wine), was a pair of old wooden doors that faced the corner at a 45-degree angle. The smell was wonderful with an odor that was a mixture antique wood, paint and plumbing fumes and the general combination of hardware items. The display racks were made of wood and were probably there when the store was built. As you walked in, the check-out counter was on the left and you faced rows of these old shelving units. Paint, plumbing and glass cutting was in the far back corner which led to the warehouse and pipe cutting area. The floor, unlike the beautiful wood up front, was concrete and was most of the time covered in oil from the pipe cutting operation. We didn’t allow customers back there so safety wasn’t a concern unless you consider carrying 80-pound bags of concrete across an oily surface dangerous. All of that for $2.35/hour.

Perhaps working isn’t the best descriptive to use when trying to describe the experience, although moving those sacks of concrete, threading pipe, mixing paint and cutting glass surely qualifies as work, but rather learning would better describe what every day encompassed. I learned about intricacies of paint and how to use latex versus oil based and what works best given different applications. Plumbing was so much more than just what pipe fits inside another and how to help folks not get into trouble when fixing plumbing problems in old houses. My electrical education still today helps me around the house; I actually helped wire our new house with the knowledge I learned back in the old hardware store. Cutting and threading water and gas pipe and cutting glass completed my education and I can still today confidently cut and thread pipe. Most important, I learned to listen. Few customers came in without a problem that needed your knowledge to fix. It was a wonderful education and I highly recommend this job for any young person wanting to learn about the physical world around them. Any homeowner will save thousands of dollars in maintenance if they possess these skills; not to mention being an asset for your neighbors and family.

This wasn’t my first choice for a job, in fact, it never even occurred to me. We were not a wealthy family by any stretch, not unhappy, just not a lot of money. I knew I needed a job if I was going to have spending money as an upper classman in High School, so I started with the want ads. Burger King was looking for help so I got on the bus, several busses, and headed across town. Mind you, riding across town every working day hadn’t dawn on me at this point. I got there, had an interview which consisted of adding a column of 4 separate dollar amounts and how will you get here, that’s it. A day later I was offered the job.

At home, I proudly announced I got a job working for Burger King. To my surprise, my father didn’t like the idea. Nothing against Burger King but his idea of a job didn’t include frying hamburgers, OK broiling hamburgers. Without saying another word, he leaves the house leaving my mother and I looking dumb founded. She shrugs her shoulders and goes about her business while I have no idea what do next. My day comes back about an hour later proudly proclaiming, you start tomorrow at Stephen’s Hardware! This would have been a WTF moment, but this was in the days before WTF was even thought of. Turns out the owner of Stephen’s Hardware was a distant cousin of ours and my dad had called in a favor. I wasn’t happy, not because I was going to work at a place within walking distant but because I had to call the Burger King manager and tell him thanks but no thanks. I know, weird.

The learning I referred to earlier started from minute one when the owner’s oldest son thought it was very important to show me what pipe would fit inside another pipe?? There were 3 George’s that worked in the store, the owner, the son and a long-time employee. George K., the employee, just stood there in amazement as George Jr. brought me up to speed on pipe sizes. George K than says, are you kidding me? With all the stuff he needs to know you start with what pipe will fit inside another pipe? That pretty much defined George Jr as the keeper of odd knowledge. He was very smart, turned down a math scholarship to college, and talented. I learned so much from him. There were 2 other George’s that were regular customers so over time we had to establish a numbering system. The owner was Georgie 1, Jr was Georgie 2, GK was Georgie 3 and so on.

Georgie 1, the owner, was a bigger than life Texan that walked around with a half-smoked cigar in his mouth and an always filled cup of coffee. When he’d talk to you, or when he was trying to teach me or a customer something he would turn and bat his eyes at the ceiling. He was our real-life John Wayne. I can still remember and hear in my mind’s voice, him telling me to NEVER wash out a coffee pot son. It takes a long time for the patina to develop so why would you want to get rid of it. Germs or good taste never entered into consideration. To this day I cringe when I see my wife scrubbing the coffee pot. Just rinse it out with a little water and you’re good to go. She looks at me like I’m crazy and continues to scrub the pot. Oh well; you can lead a horse to water…

As I said, this job was a constant education. Learning to cut and thread water and gas pipe was something I’m still very proud of. I know I’m repeating myself but I’m that proud of those skills. Understanding why and how to plumb a water line made me very popular with the do-it-yourself (the term DIY didn’t exist back then) customers. One Saturday, this is a true story, there was a customer waiting for us to open and he had a length of old rusted water pipe in his hand. Of course, I asked him what he was doing, and his response was I’m just changing out this hose bibb and short nipple. Here’s your plumbing education; the faucet where you connect a garden hose is called a hose bibb and any length of pipe 24 inches or less is called a nipple. I tried to explain that he needed to be very careful connecting the new pipe because chances were the remailing old pipe was weakened. Nope, I’m good" should have been his new name as he returned time and time again for just another section of pipe. He was the first customer of the day and the last.

Back to my first day and after my deep dive into what pipe fits in another, I was ready for my first customer. Yea right. This guy comes in and I eagerly walk up and offer my help. He says he needs a ½ inch nipple 2 inches long. At this point I’m thinking Jr didn’t say anything about nipples? I start pulling open drawers all the while Georgie 2 and 3 were snickering and drooling coffee. They knew the customer and by now all three were looking at me in amazement. I finally give up, walked back and stated, I’m sorry sir, I don’t think we sell any baby products here. That did it, Georgie 2 spit his coffee out and #3 just walked off. The would-be customer didn’t know what to say and just stood there until Georgie 2 got him the ½ nipple. Never lived that down.

Across the street from the hardware store were two locally famous establishments, catty corner was Bud Rip’s Bar and directly across from us was the original Schwegmann’s Giant Supermarket. Schwegmann’s went on to be the largest grocery chain in the area. By the time I was working at the hardware store, this first location was no longer a Schwegmann’s simply because it was just too small compared to what the emporiums had grown into. Most of the Schwegmann locations had everything inside including barber shops, full service sporting goods and the ever-popular bar. The name bar doesn’t do this feature of the store justice. A patron could get fresh oysters served on the half shell, just about any po-boy sandwich you could think of, or at some locations, hot food was served. Describing what a po-boy is might take a book in itself, so you’ll have to look that up for yourself. The bar is where my dad and I (OK, just my dad) would always stop first before makin’ groceries. It was just the normal thing to do, walking around this giant store drinking a cold beer or a highball cocktail. Most shoppers were working class people, so beer was the beverage of choice. Even more specific, the beer was either Dixie or Falstaff. There’s an old joke in New Orleans, Why does Schwegmann have grocery carts? So grandpa won’t fall down while makin’ grocery’s. OK, maybe you have had to been there but to a local, we know exactly what this meant.

The location my dad and I (yes, my dad. Mom stayed home and never when to the grocery with us. I never asked why.) shopped at sold everything, it was the Super Walmart before there were even Walmart’s, super or not. This particular store had a 10-chair barber shop (on the second floor!), a really big cheese department, still can’t figure that out given the clientele, clothes section, kitchen appliances and free sample tables located all over the store. My dad would plan his route thru the store based on the free samples and how far he was from the bar. I hated the free samples because my dad would make me go back and ask for more. The free sample ladies (that doesn’t sound right) knew I was coming back for seconds or even thirds and I always felt so embarrassed. We even got our Christmas tree from there. Schwegmann’s was clearly a leader in the grocery business. Too bad the heirs couldn’t manage the business and they quickly drove the stores into bankruptcy. A lot of long-term employees lost their jobs and many lost pensions. Those same heirs had the nerve to run for public office and to my amazement actually got elected! I guess the voting public was hoping they learned how not to destroy a solid private empire before moving into public office. Seriously?

Chapter 4

How did I get so sidetracked? Might as well finish this detour with Bud Rip’s bar. This was mecca for the local bar scene back in 40’s through the 80’s. Mr. Bud was very involved in politics, social organizations and, of course, Mardi Gras. I’ll meet you at Bud Rip’s was heard at many social functions. It was always interesting to see who was walking into the bar, from the everyday Joe to politicians to rich people; it was better and certainly more interesting than watching the local news to get an idea of the going’s on in the neighborhood.

OK, I’m back to why I even mentioned the hardware store’s neighbors. On this particular day, Georgie 2 and I would earn a community service award for, as Georgie 1 would later yell at us, being stupid! It started as a normal day but soon turned into something otherworldly. I’m at the front of the store, by those 2 large front doors set at 45 degrees to the corner and in the summer, we would keep them open. The angle of the doors proved important because that allowed us to see in both direction down Piety and down Burgundy. Out of nowhere, a woman runs in yelling they’re robbing the grocery store! It wasn’t a Schwegmann’s anymore, but it was still a bustling grocery and the owners were good friends of ours. Since I was closest to the front I immediately start to close and lock the doors. This is when I see an older man walking, more like stumbling, out of Bud Rip’s. I ran across the street and pulled him back inside the bar. Not a big deal so far. Then I notice a woman and very young child kneeling down beside a car, only problem she was on the sidewalk side of the car and only a couple of cars away from the front door of the grocery. I ran over and made them come with me inside our store. We made it without incident and just as the door was closing, we heard gun shots. By this time Georgie 2 and I were poking our heads out the door, stupid, I know, to be nosy. These two guys come out the front of the grocery and are shooting back into the store. The first thing we are thinking is that the owner, Mr. Ron and our friend, had been shot. Turns out they were shooting the unarmed cash