The Palm Beach Post from West Palm Beach, Florida • Page 49

THE PALM BEACH POST" JANUARY 1 1,1993 3 Punching In TOURISTS ARE OUT THERE IF YOU LOOK CORPORATE CURMUDGEON Make up your mind give indecision a chance The reason why worry kills more people than work is that more people worry than work. Robert Frost Here I stand at the midpoint of my working life. And there I stood, one night last week, at the stove. Home after a meeting that lasted well into the night, I was making myself some dinner. Standing there, reading the label for "Oriental Stir-fry Chicken and Vegetables," I found the philosophy for the second half of my career: "Do not overstir." Small wonder my career has been more tiresome than it needed to be too darn much stirring.

My career vegetables just IB aren't crisp; my career noodles are 1 1 watery. largest travel agency, Russian-owned VAO Intourist, which announced in June that it will use its joint venture with a Lake Worth-based tourism wholesaler to promote Miami as a gateway for Russian tourists and that could bring more business to Palm Beach County. More directly, American Venture Communications Inc. brings about 50 Russians per month to Singer Island in Riviera Beach to study U.S. business operations and visit Palm Beach County plants.

"We bring them here for a couple of weeks so they can be educated in this country from a business point of view from local businesses," said Vladimir Checklin, the Russian-based chairman of AVACOM. "We can't teach them in two weeks what they've gotten for the past 70 years, but we can shift their brains a little bit in the right direction. AVACOM, a New York-based company, has seminars throughout the U.S. It is initiating a tourism division because many of its working class business clients want to return to South Florida with their families, said Ara A. Ohanian, its president.

AVACOM does seminars for managers of oil refineries, strategic planning and others. They come to Palm Beach County for initial training before traveling to other parts of the country for specialized training. "This area is of great interest to Russian managers for its weather conditions and hospitality," Ohanian said. "In Russia now, it's minus 20 degrees." KENNETH BOHANNON 1993 convention from Miami to Boca Raton. Hunter pursued that group after black attorneys in Miami asked the group to honor a tourism boycott of Dade County because local politicians refused to offer welcome to Nelson Mandela during his visit there.

The black lawyers' convention is expected to bring $5 million into the area's economy. Last month the county contracted with EquiVest, a black-owned venture, to lure more conventioneers here. EquiVest recently announced another group meeting this summer with 1,000 participants and 1994 conventions with hundreds of participants for national and regional meetings. The less developed, but still evolving markets from Russia and China, are virtually untapped markets for Palm Beach County. Business and government officials from both nations want their business managers to learn the ways of a free market economy to improve trade between their countries and other nations, particularly the United States.

A number of delegations already have come to Palm Beach County. "This is the first time that Russians are coming to the U.S. and they are coming to Palm Beach County," said Jennifer Clark, spokeswoman for the Palm Beach County Convention and Visitors Bureau. "It's a new market and luckily somebody else is going after it for us." Still, that market has its limits, she said: "It doesn't make sense to close our office in Italy and open up an office in Moscow." There is help from the world's Palm Beach County could make more than $10 million this summer from black visitors who, two or three years ago, might not have even considered coming. More than 6,000 black visitors are expected to arrive for four major conventions in Palm Beach County this summer.

They will add substantially to the county's tourism in months when the No. 1 industry is at its weakest point. The surge in black visitors is simple: They just had to be invited, said Alvin Hunter, co-owner of ETA Travel in West Palm Beach and consultant to the Boca Raton Resort and Club on minority tourism. There are new markets evolving for Palm Beach County's tourism industry that did not exist as viable markets as recently as two years ago, and they all look promising. The county's more active recruitment of black tourists, and the changing economies of Russia and China, bring new possibilities for tourism in Palm Beach County.

Black professionals complained over the past several years that tourism promoters were overlooking the lucrative market of black tourists and conventioneers. When the county and the resort contracted with Hunter to lure such business, the change was set in motion. This summer, three major conventions of black professionals are coming back-to-back to the Boca Resort, the county's perennial five-star hotel. The first and largest of the three is the National Bar Association, which decided in February 1991 to move its For one thing, from here out, I'm going to worry less. And no worrying about worrying, either.

I just won't stir up my anxieties. I'm going to start with my decisions. "Trying to make a decision" is just more stirring. For instance, enough of this "worst-case scenario" game. There is no such thing as a "worst case," at least not for a person with my imagination.

An executive might say, "Our worst case would be to lose Dale Dauten KETCHUP CUSTOMERS POUR IT ON IN JAPAN Ketchup maker Kagome Co. Ltd. saw its profits soar 79.7 percent to 3.09 billion Japanese yen ($25. 1 million) in the six months to last September from a year earlier. Kikkoman Japan's top soy sauce maker, saw 28.

1 percent growth to 2.24 billion yen ($18.2 million) in current profit for the six months to June. A Kagome spokesman ascribed the profit jump to higher sales of ketchup and other condiments. Japan's economic slowdown has curtailed fancy dining as it bites into corporate profits, but it is ringing the dinner bell for ketchup, mayonnaise and soy sauce. These days, household money is tight and consumers are cooking at home. "Seasoning makers that sell more to consumers than to restaurants are enjoying profit growth," said Kazuhiro Harada, analyst at Nikko Research Center.

a major account and have business fall 15 percent." Why is that Why not two accounts? What about three? Four? Same with one's career. Trying to be helpful, people say "What's the worst that could happen?" What is the worst? Being passed over for promotion? That's bad. Being fired? That's worse. Maybe it's being electrocuted by your PC as you sit at your desk. Terrible.

But is it the worst? What if you not only get electrocuted but it turns out that your last evening was spent doing tax returns? And what if your last meal was a Slim-Fast shake? So no more decisions via the worst-case torture. In fact, I'm going to make fewer decisions of any kind. My friend Mike Specht handed down to me this advice: "Procrastination is the key to life. The fewer decisions you make, the better off you are." Here's the logic: Given sufficient time, most decisions will make themselves. Typically, Mike Specht says, "the answer becomes so obvious that it really can't be called a decision." It's worked for me before Thinking back, I can see how this has worked for me in my career.

A good example is the time I had two employees I needed to replace. Because there were two, I couldn't make up my mind about when or how to make the change. I procrastinated, choosing to muddle along till our work load eased. But before that happened, one of the pair came into my office, apologized for his poor work and handed in his resignation. He was leaving in order to devote himself to family problems, but he volunteered to stay on long enough to help hire and train his replacement, which he did.

Meanwhile, the other employee turned out to be a slow starter. She became one of the best staffers I've ever had and, eventually, a department manager. But my little experience doesn't compare to the story of Eric Easton. In 1963, Easton became the manager of a young rock-and-roll band called the Rolling Stones. He listened to them perform, then confided to his partner, "The singer will have to go." But Easton procrastinated.

He never got around to replacing Mick Jagger. Who says you can't get no satisfaction? You just need to give decisions the chance to make themselves. So from now on, no more overstirring. And that indecision is final maybe. Let's wait and see what happens.

Dale Dauten is a Tempe, businessman, author FARCUS WHAT'S AHEAD By David Waisglass and Gordon Coulthart Last Consensus NEXT WEEK'S NUMBERS Period Estimates THURSDAY December producer prices, percent change -02 01 December retail sales, percent change 0 OJ FRIDAY December business inventories, percent chg. 0.3 December consumer prices, percent change 02 0-2 December trade deficit, in billions 48 December capacity utilization, in percent 78.9 79.2 NEXT WEEK'S DEVELOPMENTS Monday Trial scheduled to begin in Ann Arbor, lawsuit challenging the General Motors decision to close its Willow Run assembly plant New York state judge says he will rule whether Clark Clifford is fit to stand trial in the BCCI scandal Wednesday Automakers announce early January auto sales Members of UAW Local 1853 in Spring Hill, vote on keeping current innovative 1-M.