Claytie: The Roller-Coaster Life of a Texas Wildcatter

17. "Now, before you get mad and before these guys pull their guns and shoot me, let me tell you why we're going to do it this way."

As Professor Clayton Williams Jr. traversed the financial hills and hollows of the 1980s, he joked often about his entrepreneurial diversity, and the pitfalls therein. “I’m in oil and gas, real estate , banking, and cattle—everything that’s losing money,” he told D Magazine with a bit of lighthearted candor. In 1984, acting not so much on a whim but a sense of necessary adventure, he took an uncharacteristic plunge into high technology. The idea sprung from an unexpected problem that developed at his fledging Midland office complex, ClayDesta Plaza. A major company postponed its move into the plaza because of a months-long delay in obtaining phone service . Concerned with the threat of losing such occupants, Claytie installed a shared-tenant service for the entire complex, which allowed the major tenants to move in and occupy the space—and start paying rent. Seized by innate curiosity and what he described later as a mental lapse, he then began exploring the foreign world of telecommunications and the opportunities of the new digital technologies. “We just kind of eased into it,” he told the Reporter-Telegram. The newspaper reported how, with a $45 million investment, Claytie formed a new company, ClayDesta Communications, and placed one of his brightest young executives, Randy Kidwell, in charge. The company built the first all-digital system to connect several West Texas cities to Dallas. Eventually, a digital microwave network extended from Amarillo to Lubbock, Midland, Big Spring, San Angelo, Abilene, and Dallas–Fort Worth. And a digital fiber Now, before you get mad and before these guys pull their guns and shoot me, let me tell you why we’re going to do it this way.” 17 “ 220 P A R T T H R E E optics network stretched from Dallas–Fort Worth through Waco, Austin, San Antonio, and Houston. Supplementing its communications network with a long-distance pricing schedule, ClayDesta first targeted residential customers and then zeroed in on the business market, “a profitable battle ground for most long-distance companies”—not the least of which was mighty AT&T. “We are what the free-enterprise system is about,” Claytie told the Reporter-Telegram. “We are the competition. We brought the customer a better product at a better price. We are a growth company . I think the main thrust of our company will be better and cheaper. . . . I think the posture of this company for some time will be 5 percent growth a month, rather than ‘hallelujah, go, go.’ Where that leads us, I don’t know. “This was shades of my Clajon start-up: a better product, at a better price, and with a smile.” Where it led was down a serpentine road to a David-versusGoliath battle, a war that spilled over into the Texas legislature, scrambled up the Capitol steps via horseback, and then propelled Claytie into the statewide political arena. For ClayDesta Communications to survive, the company needed to position itself against not only AT&T but the likes of Southwestern Bell and MCI. To gain name recognition and attract customers, the company needed a quality television advertising campaign. ClayDesta gambled with a small start-up Midland company called Admarc. “Itwasabigdealforus,averybigdeal,”saidAdmarcexecutiveJoe Milam. “We were pitching this thing literally for our own survival.” Admarc adopted Claytie’s mantra, the hallmark of his ClajonCoyanosa success: deliver a better product at a better price. Produced around a Pony Express theme, the commercials were simultaneously “high-tech and high-touch” and featured Claytie galloping across the mountains and pastures of his Alpine ranch and pitching the merits of ClayDesta as an anonymous spokesperson on camera. T H E G O - G O Y E A R S 221 “We never identified him as the owner of the company,” Milam said. “We never identified him as anything. It’s just that when Claytie is being Claytie, he has a look in his eye, a demeanor on camera, an honesty that people immediately like.” But before a word was spoken on camera, Milam faced a crisis in a cow pasture that threatened to scuttle the campaign before it took off. Milam’s director had fallen ill, and a Hollywood director was recruited at the last second. His name was Scott Redman, who happened to be in Dallas when contacted. Redman agreed to fly out for the first shoot at Happy Cove Ranch. This is Milam’s abbreviated but otherwise unabridged account...