The Travel Business

Velma Jane Livergood was the fifth woman to marry Joe Kirkland. Barney writes that line the way you'd say it over a drink. Joe died a month after hiring Barney, and Jane — newly christened Jane Kirkland — became Barney's boss. You can't type, she said one day, watching him. Barney replied: You didn't ask how long it took me to type it. That particular conversation foreshadowed the whole year. She milked the company. Barney eventually said, You've got to be the highest-paid secretary in the world. The end was in sight for both of them.

International Travel Advisors

Across the river in Alton, Illinois, a man named Sully Sullivan was running a travel agency called International Travel Advisors and running out of money. A partner, John Jenkins, bought half for $5,000. Sully hired Barney as manager. The office was a dingy former wig shop, with — Barney was told — a bookie joint upstairs. The only employee was Jenkins's daughter. Barney fired her on day one: a nice girl but she couldn't do the job. I might as well find out how much power I have in this job, he writes.

Within a year, Barney had turned the business profitable. KLM offered him a district sales manager job for a lot more money. Barney went to Jenkins and said he wanted to be a partner instead. Sully, running out of money again, agreed to sell his half for $5,000. Barney didn't have $5,000. Jenkins cosigned a bank loan for the full amount. Barney was suddenly half-owner.

The business lived on commissions: five percent on a domestic airline ticket, seven percent on an international one, ten percent on a tour. Barney realized quickly that the real money was in packaging tours yourself — buying the airline, hotel, and attraction pieces in bulk, selling them as a bundle, manufacturing business rather than waiting for walk-ins.

Harry Pope's Food-Service Tour

Barney ate a lot of meals at a cafeteria down the block owned by Harry Pope, a barrel-chested man with six hundred employees across three cafeterias who also ran the Food Service Management Guild. Harry came to him six months into Barney's stake in ITA with a bigger idea: a tour of Europe for his Guild members. Would Barney set it up? Copenhagen, Stockholm, Milan, Zurich, Paris, London — restaurant after restaurant. Harry ran a bigger operation than anyone they visited; everywhere they went the red carpet came out.

Barney went to Washington University's alumni office next. If they'd give him a postgraduate-center professor of European history as tour leader, he'd build the brochure, do the mailings, and run the whole thing. For every 30 who booked, two free seats went to the alumni office. He began doing the same for churches, schools, golf clubs, and athletic associations. These were his first “rat-race” 21-day Europe tours — hectic enough, Barney admits, to feel like a Mel Stuart movie.

Parting Ways With Jenkins

Jenkins and Barney ran on opposite philosophies. Barney would rather pay $500 a month for the best bookkeeper; Jenkins wanted to pay $300 and settle for someone barely qualified. By 1962 it wasn't working. John, we've come to a parting of the ways, Barney said. He offered three options: you buy me out, I buy you out, or I walk out.

Jenkins valued his own half at $50,000 and Barney's half at $16,000. Barney came back with a counter: $5,000 now and $5,000 a year for nine years. He knew Jenkins took a free $5,000 trip every year. It was, effectively, ten years of free trips. Jenkins took the deal. Business boomed the year after he left. Barney made $150,000 and simply paid him the remaining $40,000 in a lump sum to end the relationship. Our association ended, he writes. I've been happy ever since.

The $350,000 No

By 1965, the jet age had changed everything. A six-day ocean crossing to Europe had collapsed into six hours. A record-business heir recovering from a heart attack offered Barney $350,000 for his company so his Harvard-senior son could come home to run it. They drew up a contract. They set a lunch to sign.

The day before the lunch, the chancellor of Washington University asked Barney to lunch too. Barney said he had a prior lunch appointment he couldn't move. The chancellor said fine, come at three.

At the signing lunch Barney told the buyer he was leaving for Europe for two weeks; he wanted to think about it. The buyer signed anyway, waiting for Barney. At the three o'clock meeting with the chancellor, Barney was offered the Washington University vice-chancellorship in charge of external affairs — bookstore, cafeterias, travel company, everything. Barney started laughing. The chancellor was confused. Barney told him there were two things the chancellor didn't know. First, I own the company. Second, he had just signed a contract to sell it.

Barney went to Europe for two weeks. He came back and turned both down.

B or B, 1967

By the end of 1966, Barney was earning well but working seventy-hour weeks. He saw only one real way forward: hire specialists for parts of the job, people who knew enough to be useful but not enough to start their own firms. His first salesman was a former Adler typewriter salesman — not IBM, Barney explains, because anyone can sell a brand everyone knows. He wanted someone who knew how to get a foot in the door with an unknown product.