My first real job in sales was so successful that my client base was reduced by my employer. I responded to this action by moving on.
The Vietnam War was heating up and I was eligible for the draft. No longer in school, I knew that my number would be drawn soon. And it was. Little did I know that my prayers for a deferment would be answered and would afford me an exemption from military duty. I would soon be working for the Ampex Corporation and with the U.S. Department of Defense in a civilian capacity. The defense work closely associated me with top research scientists working in the area of primate and human behavior modification. Ironically, I learned more about the mind from my casual relationships with these scientists than I did working at the various research sites. The sites included teaching hospitals, state mental institutions, military bases, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) facilities, and the Yerkes Primate Center.
The following years of my corporate employment in national and international sales evolved into sales and marketing management positions in an executive capacity. My personal life, in terms of loving relationships, was again in shambles but my career and ongoing mind, brain, human behavior research was rewarding enough to compensate for my lack of emotional expression. The secrets I had learned so well concerning powers of persuasion, both conscious and subliminal, had long since become a functioning part of my mind's arsenal of defensive and offensive tools of control. I resolved then and there to become a "control freak". Instead, my fantasy was not to learn what I could control but what was controlling me.
Then, around 1986, a peer friend of mine observed that I had arrived in the perverbial "comfon zone" in terms of presenting profitable ideas for others to set upon, and advised me to go into business for myself. Shortly thereafter he provided me an excellent example by resigning his six-figure executive marketing directorship and nominated me as a candidate for his replacement.
Ironically, for the first time in my life, the nomination was rejected because I did not possess at least a master's degree in business management or communications. His assistant was given the position, and I was subsequently offered the assistant's vacated position with no hope of promotion, which of course I refused. Soon thereafter, my friend, free of his corporate golden handcuffs, established his own firm which became a very successful business.
Around this same time a childhood acquaintance, long since socially separated from my life, reappeared long enough to introduce me to his country music entertainment friend, Alex Houston. From this introduction I learned this acquaintance, Ray Myers and his wife, Regina, are alleged pedophiles who reportedly sexually molested Cathy's daughter and their own children. It seemed that Houston was looking for someone with international business negotiating skills who could assist him in putting together a large enough sales deal to finance a manufacturing operation. After spending a few days of complimentary consulting time with him, I had made some rather interesting and intriguing observations about the man and his ideas. First of all, Houston did have a legitimate, potentially profitable idea concerning the manufacture of an electrical capacitor device that could increase energy efficiency for large industrial consumers. Secondly, Houston favorably impressed me as a calculated risk-taker. Thirdly, Houston agreed to finance my production of a marketing plan for presentation to potential foreign buyers. And finally, Houston agreed that I would run the company as President, if and when I sold that plan, I thought. "No problem!"
The intriguing part of this «budding» relationship was my awareness of Houston's propensity for dishonesty. I felt an urgent need for legal advice on how to insure contractual protection from Houston. Within days, Houston and I had conceptually and contractually agreed to start up the business. I designed a logo and assigned the name UniPhayse. The contracts we entered bound both of us to our respective areas of commitment and was iron clad. Houston's willingness to participate in my legal protection maneuver further perplexed me, because of the obvious 'honesty type" clauses contained in the agreement. At the time, in my mind, I had determined that if Houston could "keep it clean" and perform his role, we would be able lo make this company successful. If not, I owned the company lock, stock, and barrel and could still make it work.
Months later, with business and marketing plans in ray briefcase and a demonstration model of the proposed product in hand, Houston and I boarded an airplane to Hong Kong. We were met upon arrival by a tall, well-dressed, Korean gentleman who introduced himself as William Yoon. He owned an international shipping company. His ships carried practically everything from scrap metal to Chinese silkworm missiles all over the world,
Mr. Yoon, as he preferred to be called, in keeping with Far Eastern protocol, was interested in negotiating a joint venture company with his friends in the most populated nation on Earth, The People's Republic of China. All arrangements had been made by Mr. Yoon's staff for Houston, myself, and him to fly to Beijing the following day to begin negotiations with the Mining Ministry. After several days of exhausting discussions through an interpreter almost entirely between myself and the deputy director of the Chinese Mining Ministry, it appeared as though we had a workable deal.
An elegant banquet was ordered by our gracious Chinese hosts, and it was there I learned that the Mining Ministry was a part of the Chinese Ministry of Defense. Feelings of patriotism welled up in me for the first time in my life. I was aware that China was engaged in supplying missiles to Libya, a Middle Eastern country with whom the U.S. was in conflict. The Chinese were swapping missiles and other weapons for cheap Libyan light crude oil. The Chinese were about the only country in the world who dared defy the Reagan Administration's trade embargo. These fleeting thoughts of being involved with the Chinese military felt treasonous to me. Although uncomfortable with the idea of a business venture with such potential for political disaster, I reminded myself that hundreds of other U.S. companies were already in China. Houston refused to discuss the subject.
During the return flight from Beijing to Hong Kong, I confided my patriotic concerns to Mr. Yoon knowing that he would soon become my business partner. He eloquently relieved my fears of potential disaster with a complicated explanation that made sense at the time. This man politely informed me that we could not lose money as he and I would have interim control over all product sales revenue generated outside of China, By Chinese law for joint venture companies, 60 % of all manufactured product must go outside China.
Houston and I returned to Tennessee and I briefly met his wife, Cathy, for the first time when she greeted us at the gate. She appeared to me to be young, beautiful, very dumb, and dressed like a prostitute. I paced my walk to be several steps away from her as we headed to the baggage claim area. Within a few weeks of this visit, a delegation of Chinese electrical engineers and finance experts were flown to our Tennessee office for more negotiations and to collect technical production data (we held) for future manufacturing purposes.
Soon after the delegation departed for China, I received a mysterious phone call from someone at the U.S. Department of State, aka the State Department. It seems someone in my Chinese delegation had earlier been refused entry into this country due to his being identified as an international weapons supplier for terrorists. This telephone voice assured me that there were no problems that would arise and that this information was not to be publicized. I thanked him and assured him the information was secure.