Day Twenty-Six: Charleston, SC

Goodbye Miami

I give Chris a big kiss on the cheek and say, "I don t want to leave but it's time for us to go."  I didn t want to wake Jay up to say goodbye but Chris said he would be upset if I didn t say good bye, so I come to his bed and give him a big hug.

Chris and Jay's apartment buildingI've enjoyed the vacation and it has been fun, but I've hit the point where I have trouble justifying what I am doing here. I don't want to lose sight of what I am trying to accomplish. I can t see the world if I stay in Miami and its time for me to go. I need to move on. Back to NYC.

After 9 hours on the road, we arrive in Charleston, SC. I check into the Vedune Inn, one of three hotels in historic Charleston that allows dogs. The Inn is quaint. We have a fireplace and a comfortable bed.

I head out to get a bite to eat and Nick at the front desk offers to watch Lyla while I am out. Charleston is a nice town, but it's dead. Nick at the Inn tells me that it picks up in March but it's usually quiet now. Virginia, my bartender/server at Amen Street, tells me that between January and Valentine s day, it's pretty empty but it gets packed on the weekends. No wonder I got such a great rate at my hotel plus an upgrade to a king with a fire place.

Lyla at the Vedune Inn

I order the Mahi Mahi and turn to the gentleman next to me and ask, "What does one do here on a Tuesday night?" His name is Walt. He was in real estate development and he lost everything in the crash. I learn that Charleston was hit pretty badly in the crash. He is trying to get back on his feet. He is here with Jeb, his business partner. They are in law school together but they don t want to be lawyers.

"I was paying my lawyer $100,000 a year.  After the crash there wasn t much for us to do, so I spent that money on school instead," Jeb explains. Jeb went to Clemson and worked in proprietary trading for a firm here in Charleston. He saw the excitement in private equity and he wanted to get in on the action, but he didn t think anyone would hire him, so he went out and tried to buy companies on his own.

"How did you plan to finance the buyout?" I ask.

"We were just looking for the company. We decided we would figure out the financing later," he responds. They looked at a variety of companies, mostly companies that provided blue-collar services, such as plumbing.

Eventually, they found a trucking company, with steady cash flows and earnings that was based in Tulsa, OK. They valued it at $32mm. It was a family owned company. The father wanted to retire and cash out but leave the company to his sons to manage. The family signed a letter of intent with Jeb and his friend to buy the company. Jeb convinced them to help with the financing by providing an $8mm seller note. They brought in a large private equity firm in New York. They were ready to close and then Lehman went bankrupt, the world changed and their senior loan stepped out. Three years later, they closed the deal for $32mm. Jeb explains that the amount didn t change because the business is not a typical trucking business. The trucks pick up and replace huge oil tanks, so until pipes replace the current transportation of oil in the South, business should be constant.

The moral of Jeb s story is that you don t need to work for someone else in order to get to where you want to be. If you can gain someone s trust and sell him on your commitment and ability, he will want to do business with you.

Jeb and Walt recently bought a cloud computing company. Walt and I discuss the bubble, and he explains why he gambled away his fortunes. In order to not pay taxes on the money he made developing real estate, he reinvested it in new real estate development project. "I won my chips and put them back on the table," he says. He tells me what it is like to have money, get comfortable in your way of life and then lose it all. Walt says, "Life always brings you back to your true self. Having money can move you away from it, but you always come back"

After dinner, I come back to the Inn and I tip Nick for watching Lyla.

On my walk with Lyla before bed, I hear Nick behind me. "Don t be scared, I am not following you, I just wanted to find you before I took off. I didn't look at what you gave me when you did and I just did and it's too much," he says.

"No, no," I say. "You have been so good to us. You watched Lyla for three hours." He also gave me an upgraded room.

"She just slept the whole time, it was no problem at all. That s just southern hospitality ma'am," he responds.

Every person I ve met here in the past 5 hours has been so nice. This city may lack the glamour and excitement of New York, but they do have southern hospitality.