We arrived in Bloomington, Illinois, home office of Mr. Oneals' business operations and began looking for a cheap apartment. Bloomington was a State College town and rentals had a waiting list and were not cheap. We wound up staying in a cheap motel in a small near-by town, and because of the short money supply lived on two small meals a day. Usually toast and coffee for breakfast, and the lunch/dinner was about 2.30 to 3pm and consisted of a hamburger or a cheap lunch buffet. After about three weeks ONeal was able to find us a small apartment. We spent a week or so learning his discount business and how they operated and were then sent to each of his stores as future store managers. We would show up on Monday morning and be put to work as managers in training under the existing manager. We were spies for a week. We were mostly given the roughest jobs but on the Friday afternoon it was our turn. We would spend about 1-1/2 to 2 hours grilling the manager then report to ONeal on the Saturday. This went on for about six weeks.
Mr. ONeal was also wanting to start a new chain of stores. His existing stores were simple discount centers with clothes, shoes, cookingware, hardware, toiletries and typical 5 and 10 cents store items. But no groceries. He had heard about another company which were opening discount groceries. Basically they were the fore-runner of Costco, except no perishables. They were located in Northern Iowa and South Dakota - so guess what! Our next trip was to those locations on a week and a half visit , watching their operations, how they did things, their pricing, volume, appearance and their advertising. We returned and delivered the information to ONeal, along with some recommendations. He opened one store of this type about four months later, but it did not turn out to be a good moneymaker for him. In order to save money he had gone with a location about five miles out of town, and ended up with half the volume he needed. When you are in the discount business, the secret is volume.
Our ONeal venture over, we now dug into what we had gone back to the MidWest for - to build a chain of motels. Don had secured a loan for $450,000 which is what I had told him it would cost to build and furnish the 80 unit motel with pool. But as Margaret said in her blog, he was not able to do it for that and we agreed that I should do it, so from then on I was the contractor/builder as well as the operator.
Due to the weather (snow and freeze) we were not able to start until the middle of March. Normal construction time for a project this size was six to eight months at best, but we (Margaret and I) worked as a team to build this motel. We got our base subcontractors signed up and called a meeting. I told them we were going to be renting rooms in 110 calendar days. "No Way" was the response. But I pinned each one down in front of the others and said "Are you the one who is going to hold us up" "No, not I, was the response". We had a challenge going.
We failed by eight days. It was no fault of our base contractors - it was our roofer than let us down by stalling us a week and a half. The base core subs were proud of what they had done and the local newspaper ran an article on the motel and said "yesterday a vacant lot - today a new motel - the Best 7 Inn. I would like to take a bow and all the credit for building so fast, but Margaret deserves most of the credit, if not all of it. She was very organized and worked with all the subs, kept a current and projected schedule which was adjusted daily and would call each contracts and supplier one week early, 3 days before and the day before. This system worked with everyone of them - except the roofer!The motel opened and it was an instant success. Margaret and I ran it for about seven months. Bill and Frances flew in to visit with us that summer . Carbondale was a college town - Southern Illinois University - with about 25,000 students. They were a big reason for our success, but also gave us most of our problems (how about 19 students all crammed in one room for a starter). You name it we had it!
We hired full time managers the following January, but in the meantime, financing money was very tight and it was difficult to obtain development loans and we were not going anywhere with future development. Don Geary and one of his partners Bob Reeves had obtained a loan and started construction on a motel in Paducah, Kentucky. This was going to be our first franchise and second Best 7 Inn, but other problems were coming up. Both Lowell ONeal and Bob Brewer were dragging their feet on expansion because of the difficulty in getting loans and Don Geary and Bob Reeves decided to drop their franchise and go forward as a new chain if we (Margaret and I) would join them. Paducah was about half finished, and they asked that we finish the construction and then go ahead with a new chain Regal 8 Inns. We said yes.
You might wonder why we chose to leave a successful on-going operation and start over. But we knew that we would not have had that motel if is were not for Don Geary's ability to hustle up money (in that case a good friend who was President of the Mt. Vernon Savings and Loan). And it was he, and he alone that had found the money for the motel in Paducah. It was obvious that ONeal was losing interest and was talking about getting into politics, maybe running for governor or congress (which he never did). Bob Brewer, who was the person I dealt with mostly on operations, was very controling, had his own ideas about the smallest of details and was beginning to be a royal pain. Needless to say, he and I were beginning to butt heads. Don Geary was my kind of man - a go getter, a gambler and someone who made things work.
We made two major purchases - a new 1969 T-Bird and a trailer that we had set up in a trailer park in Paducah. Were were able to complete the construction late May and a month later we completed the Sambos Restaurant next door. We had hired managers from the start up in Paducah and we purchased the second Regal 8 Inn in Huntsville, Tx (a Rodeway Inn), followed by another purchase and motel #3 in Fairfield, Illinois (about 30 miles east of Mt. Vernon). In the meantime Don Geary with another group of partners (known as the CW group) had started building a new Regal 8 Inn in Mt. Vernon, Illinois.
We moved our trailer to Mt. Vernon and rented a small two room office. We purchased another existing motel, this time in Midland, TX. This made five in all - and all making money and doing well. At this time we were managing the franchise operation(s) for a fee ----------------THINGS WERE LOOKING GOOD.
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