I stood on the cracked sidewalk staring at the door plaque. Yes, this was 824 East Baltimore Street. Maybe my father was right to be concerned. I’d grown up in this city. I knew this block of East Baltimore Street.
What kind of publishing company would be based here?
I mustered my courage and went inside for my meeting with Bill Bonner. The interview consisted of one question.
“What do you think of the Oxford comma?” Mr. Bonner wanted to know. “Yea or nay?”
“Yes,” I said. “Always. Apples, oranges, and pears isn’t the same as apples, oranges and pears.”
“Agreed,” Bill said. “When can you start?”
It took longer than it should have for me to cop on to the answer to my question about what sort of operation I was hooking up with. Turned out, Agora was a direct mail house, “filling up dumpsters across America,” as Bill put it. I’d had no idea.
To my relief, junk mail wasn’t the point. Here in the heart of the Baltimore ghetto I was welcomed by an intriguing collection of oddballs.
The chief financial officer dressed year-round in white T-shirts and itty-bitty white shorts to show off his forever tan. The chief financial editor’s office was stacked floor to ceiling with newspapers from around the world that he never threw out. In this pre-Internet world, he relied on them for research. How he ever found what he was looking for was a mystery.
No matter how early I arrived to work, Bill, Fred, and Robert were already hard at it. I so wanted to be part of their world but was just smart enough to recognize that I was nowhere near smart enough.
My job was to edit copy that I mostly didn’t understand. “Oil & War”? “Paris Confidential”? What business did this 21-year-old girl who’d traveled outside the United States but once and only to Bermuda for Spring Break have editing books with titles like those?
But Bill gave me the chance that first year I worked for him to take on those projects and others as unlikely. In the process, he opened my mind to a world that was much bigger than the one I’d known.
Then, for two-and-a-half decades to follow, he carried on presenting chance after chance.
Two years after I joined the crew, the editor of Agora’s International Living newsletter quit. Bruce wanted to write fiction. The day he resigned, he walked straight from Bill’s office into mine.
“Go on,” he told me. “Go in there now and tell Bill you want to be the new editor of International Living before he has time to consider anyone else.”
Again, I had to muster my courage, but I shouldn’t have worried. When I told Bill that I thought I could fill the International Living editor role and would appreciate the chance to try, he smiled, stood up from his chair, and reached across his desk to shake my hand. “Congratulations,” he said, “and thank you. You’ve saved me.”
A year after that Bill suggested I try writing a promo package. I didn’t know what that meant but was too excited at having been presented the opportunity to question it. Bill gave me samples of what he called “current control packages.”
“These are magalogs,” he said. “This format is working well for our other products. We should try one for International Living.”
I wrote a magalog for IL that not only mailed but became a brief control. Based on that track record, Bill offered me another chance.
Agora was destined for billion-dollar glory, but the early years were lean. Bill sometimes took copywriting side gigs. He invited me to collaborate on one. Our “Trade Secrets” package for Boardroom earned me $1,000. I remember the day Bill handed me my check. It bought me a trip to Uruguay.
Start Your New Life Today, Overseas
Bill began inviting me to marketing meetings and copying me on financial statements. I transitioned from editor to publisher for International Living… then Bill asked if I’d be up for launching a new division.
Not everyone across the organization was on board with the idea. Some had trouble taking this young sometimes ponytailed girl seriously. But Bill had faith. He, Mark Ford, and I worked together to start Agora Health.
My early-in seat at the Agora table set me on a career path I’d never imagined but came to cherish. It connected me with my tribe. I found I liked these free-thinking contrarian misfits. And it expanded my horizons big time.
I realized from day one at Agora that I had a lot of catching up to do. These folks I was now privileged to be spending my days with had been everywhere and seen everything.
One year in, Bill agreed to allow me an extended vacation. A friend and I bought discounted tickets on IcelandAir and a couple of Eurail passes then spent three weeks carrying backpacks across Europe. My appetite was whetted. As soon as I returned to Baltimore, I planned my next trip.
Bill supported my wanderlust. He invited me to join for business trips to London, Paris, and Bonn. In my first five years at Agora, I visited 12 countries.
I was invited to participate as a partner in the purchase of a finca on the Pacific coast of Nicaragua called Rancho Santana then as a partner in the International Living business and then came an even bigger chance.
How would I like to move to Ireland, Bill wondered one day.
Agora had been on a mission of global expansion for a decade. Now Bill wanted to establish a base in the Auld Sod whence the Bonners hailed.
That suggestion led to a tour of Ireland. On that tour I met a guy named Lief Simon, also planning a new life on the Emerald Isle. He and I married, moved to Waterford, and launched Agora Ireland.
It wasn’t always easy going, starting a business from nothing while also starting a family in a new country with zero support on the ground. Two years of Irish labor law, Irish bankers, Irish staff, Irish landlords, and Irish weather later, I came close to throwing in the towel.
“Just hold on,” Bill said when I called to tell him I was thinking I’d like to return to Baltimore. “I’ll come visit. We’ll talk things through.”
Bill flew to Ireland and spent two days in the office in Waterford meeting with me and the team. When it was time for him to go, I walked him out.
We stood together on the front stoop of 5 Catherine Street, in front of the Georgian front door I’d painted red. Bill looked left toward the Peoples Park then right at the corner shop where we stopped every afternoon for tea and blaas.
“If you want to move back to Baltimore, that’s fine, of course,” he said. “You just say the word. But you’ve planted a seed here. It’d be a shame to walk away now.”
With Bill’s support, I stuck it out. Several years later he supported me again in a move to Paris. Four years after that Bill gave me the greatest chance of my life.
It was time for me to see what I could accomplish on my own. Bill and I met for une coupe at La Fregate, the café on the corner of rue du Bac and the river with a view of the Louvre where Bill and I had been meeting for years. It was autumn, typically grey and chilly, but we sat outside beneath the heater. We finished our champagne and stood to leave.
“This isn’t good-bye, of course,” Bill said as he kissed me on each cheek. “Only au revoir. You know where to find me.”
I nodded and turned and headed down the quay. That first step away from Bill and the world of Agora was one of the scariest of my life. Lucky for me, they’d raised me strong.
Until next time,
Kathleen Peddicord
Founding Publisher, Overseas Opportunity Letter
