Will deprivation, humiliation, and confrontation lead the way to a better, more confident you? A new self-help craze sweeping Texas wants you to think so.
Texans are always looking for a new frontier, a place where business people can do business without worrying about a lot of bureaucrats. Want to make it in Texas today? Come to Belize.
At a time when Texas seems to have lost its gift for creating fortunes, there has emerged a group of entrepreneurs who are making money by catering to the needs of people who are going broke.
They have done it all: saved New York City and Massachusetts, written economic classics, created new companies, and turned old ones around. Now, at our request, they’re fixing Texas.
One school of thought holds that when the economy is in a nosedive, that’s the time to go into business. At least that’s what a farmer, an oilman, a developer, and a banker believe.
We gave a bunch of smart Texans $50,000. (Okay, we didn’t really, we just said we did.) The money comes with these strings attached: it has to be invested in Texas now, and the investments have to pay off by 1996.
In boom times, John Connally and Ben Barnes used their political magic to build a sprawling real estate empire. Now they’re in a desperate struggle to keep themselves afloat.
A new class of self-styled experts called prosperity consultants say they have the solution to Texas’ economic bust: the bad times are all in our heads.
Their business may read like a sci-fi script, but these aging astronauts, former Nasa engineers, technocrats, and high-risk junkies are serious about selling space.
The continuing saga of the Hermann estate scandal was a shocking lesson in how Houston’s most-respected philanthropists, civic leaders, and biggest deal makers had abused their power.
From the heights of the Dallas social heap, they leaped to the national celebrity circuit. Rich, young, and fashionable, Twinkle and Bradley Bayoud are a case study in how to rise to the top.
The Hermann estate scandal exposed Houston’s most powerful deal makers, most respected philanthropist, and leading lawvers to the harsh glare of publicity. It was a shocking lesson in the abuses of power.
Robert Sakowitz set out to be a retail Renaissance man. Like his hero Leonardo da Vinci, he was going to do everything. And he did—including something he never imagined: fail.
It seems practically impossible to choose the best deal from the multitude of services offered by all the new long distance phone companies. But we’ve got their number.
A new recruit to the ranks of Mary Kay beauty consultants struggles valiantly to do his part in reaching the woman of the eighties and keeping the company in the pink.
“When the cowboys on the 06 ranch talked about losing a way of life, they often pointed to their neighbor, Clayton Williams, as an example of what they meant. He was a millionaire and an oilman, and he represented everything they hated.”
So you think that OPEC controls the price of oil and that the glut is hurting everybody in the oil business? Wrong. Traders on the international spot market are pulling the strings and getting rich in the process.
There are a hundred of them, and their job is invisibility. They come into giant office buildings after everyone has gone home and, if they do the job right, make the evidence of the day’s work disappear.
With the help of a friendly banker and some friendlier politicians, Clinton Manges conquered might Mobil Oil and saved his empire. But not for long—it’s in jeopardy again.
Clinton Manges built his empire on brushland and oil wells, political contributions and lawsuits. His influence extends to the state capitol and oil company boardrooms. To get where he is, he studied under three masters of South Texas.
Gary Bradley, a hot young land speculator in Austin, was in the middle of a $50 million deal when he ran into an outraged environmental movement and a lobbyist with some powerful clients. The fight was on.
When Bames-Connally Investments announced plans to build apartments in a South Austin neighborhood, the residents banded together to try to stop them. They won the battle but lost the war.
An Arkansas chain has refused to discount small-town buying power. Now it’s ousting local mom-and-pop operations throughout Texas and even giving K Mart a run for its money.
Texans may secretly yearn to live east of the Mississippi or across the Atlantic, but the next best thing is a subdivision named Yorktown, Nottingham County, or village Green West.
