It had been a long meeting. Lawrence had been negotiating all day with Bart Renolo, the owner of a small machine tool plant in East Los Angeles. Things were not going well. Renolo seemed to think that his building was made of gold—not bricks and mortar. And, that his customer list was filled with the CEOs of the Fortune 500.
True enough, it was a well-run little plant—clean and profitable—but nobody could resist Lawrence for long when his company, Lawrenco, Inc. put on the pressure. Renolo had tried to be friendly but that didn’t matter to Lawrence. Lawrence had bought and sold dozens of little companies like this in the past and he didn’t want any new friends, he just wanted to make money—lots of money. At the end of the day he got up from the negotiating table, packed his briefcase and said, “I’ll be back tomorrow at 8 a.m. By then you will be ready to sign the papers. . . .
