Pecking Order, page 13
“That’s part of the budget,” she told him sternly.
Ivan slowed down and said, “Okay, so what is the budget?”
“Twenty thou-sand dollars,” she told him.
Ivan was shocked. He repeated, “Twenty thousand dollars?” He figured they would need half of that. He said, “These guys are gonna give us twenty thousand dollars for a birthday party?” That was more than a quarter of a year’s earnings for him at Hutch & Mitchell.
Lucina frowned at him and said, “That’s nothing. I was gonna ask them for for-ty thousand. But since this is your first big par-ty, I want to make sure they are sa-tisfied with you.”
Ivan sat there and thought, Shit, I should have teamed up with her a long-ass time ago!
Then he asked her the obvious question. “So…why are you willing to partner on this with me? I mean, it’s obvious you already know what you’re doing.”
She took another sip of her drink and told him frankly, “It’s too much work. Most promo-ters have partners.”
Ivan couldn’t argue with that. He had run around like crazy just trying to pull off his small events for three hundred, let alone three thousand.
He said, “Okay. But why me? I mean, I’m just getting started in this thing. I really don’t even know what I’m doing yet,” he acknowledged. “I’m still on my learning curve.”
Lucina looked at him through her colored eyes and said, “That’s why. Because you are new. So I have a chance to trust you. But the other promo-ters I know…” She shook her head and said, “They all change, and I no lon-ger trust them.”
But you’re gonna trust a guy you don’t even know? Ivan asked himself. That part of it didn’t make any sense.
Lucina read his mind without him asking her the question.
She said, “Do you trust your-self with other people’s money, I-van?”
He was an accountant. It was his job to trust himself with money. He had just sold the Chargers on his trustworthiness to secure the party less than two hours ago.
He answered, “That’s all day, every day. That’s what I do. I’ve been watching a dollar since I was a kid. That’s why I became an accountant in the first place.”
She said, “Well, then trust me now to know what I am do-ing. I just had a fee-ling with you. And I met you and went with my gut. Now, if I can’t trust you, I-van, then you tell me right now.”
Damn, she was intimidating! A snappy little rich girl from Brazil, with a full Italian ego, and exotic eyes like his own to boot.
Ivan kept his composure. He looked back at her and said, “I didn’t climb out of my bed and get dressed near midnight to rush down here and meet up with you if I wasn’t serious. So just like you trust me, I gotta trust you. And we’re in this thing together now.”
Lucina smiled, the first innocent smile that Ivan had seen from her. And it melted him.
She said, “You were in bed? Oh, my God, you’re an early bird.”
Ivan was so turned on by her smile that he thought of ignoring her question to lean over and kiss her lips. Or maybe the effects of the alcohol had made him feel that way.
He caught himself instead. He answered, “Yeah, I was halfway out of here. But I’m glad I came out, though. Damn, I’m glad.”
Lucina continued to smile. She said, “Me, too,” in her accent.
That’s when Ivan began to reflect on how badly he would love to lay her down and spread her open for heavy moaning and groaning.
Right on cue, Lucina broke him away from his daydreams. “Anyway, back to biz-ness. So, we charge twenty-five dollars per head, times two to three thou-sand, and we make fif-ty to seven-ty-five thou-sand, mi-nus the for-ty thou-sand we pay the football players back. And once we add in the VIP, we can split fif-teen to twenty thou-sand apiece. Is that good enough money for you?”
Ivan couldn’t believe his ears. If they partied like that just twice a month, he could buy a house on La Jolla in a year and look down from above Interstate 5 for the rest of his life.
To keep himself from sounding too excited, he held up his drink and asked her, “What about the liquor? Do you have a liquor license? My brother said that’s how we can make even more money.”
Lucina frowned at him. “And have a bigger head-ache,” she commented. She said, “I have another partner who does that. But to have your own liquor li-cense, you need insurance, trained bar-tenders, storage for the al-cohol, a truck, and your own security team unless you sell drink tickets.”
She shook her head and said, “That’s way too much hassle for a girl. I just want to throw the par-ty.”
Ivan had to agree with her. Or at least for the moment. He had to study it more.
She said, “And by the way, we don’t spend all twenty thou-sand dollars up front. This par-ty should cost no more than twelve. So we take four thou-sand apiece off the top. That’s how you do it. Otherwise, you throw parties with no money left. And I never do that. You should al-ways have money left after budget.”
Ivan took it all in with a nod. By that time, he was glassy eyed from drinking.
Lucina asked him, “Do you need to stay a night here? You don’t look like you can drive.”
Ivan grinned at her. “Are you staying here?”
“No. I have to get up to-morrow and get ready. You have to book the radio spots in advance to get the best times and rates.”
Ivan told her, “I have to get up tomorrow, too. I gotta go back to work at the accounting office in the morning.”
“Well, maybe one day you will have your own firm. Then you won’t have to show up un-til late.”
Ivan chuckled at the thought. “Yeah, those days are coming. But not yet,” he told her.
AFTER LANDING a major party and a partnership with Lucina, Ivan’s next important meeting was with his two young webmasters. Jeff and Paul had produced phenomenal traffic for his start-up website. And that allowed Ivan to pitch solid advertiser rates.
They all sat down to discuss it over a dinner meeting at a seafood restaurant near campus. The college partners were eager to negotiate a fair share of revenue for their successful management of the website, based its outstanding traffic, like Ivan had promised them. They were up to an average of eight thousand hits per day.
Paul spoke first, without touching his food. Ivan had already handed them the proposed ad rates for comment. “So, you want to charge three hundred dollars per week, a thousand dollars per month, twenty-five hundred for the quarter, and four thousand for a half a year?”
Ivan nodded while cracking open his giant snow crab legs. “That’s reasonable, right?” he mumbled through his food. He wiped his lips with his napkin and said, “I’m basically charging a dollar for each one hundred eighty hits. In other words, for the eight thousand daily hits that we get, I’m charging about forty-five dollars per day until we saturate our ad space or increase our hits. Then we’ll have to raise the price and charge them more. And we always give the better rates to the longer-running advertisers.”
Jeff did his own calculations. He said, “So, that’s a dollar per two hundred forty hits for the month, a dollar per two hundred ninety hits for the quarter, and a dollar for every three hundred and sixty hits for a half a year?”
“If we can get a company to commit for that long,” Ivan answered.
“What if we continue to increase traffic past ten thousand hits per day?” Paul quizzed him.
Ivan said, “Then we’ll raise the rates every three months as the traffic continues to grow. That’s like in any other business. And we still give the most faithful companies the better rates.”
Paul and Jeff understood it with a nod. It was all basic numbers. Jeff then began to pick through his food, while Paul continued to read from Ivan’s printout.
Paul said, “You’re only raising our maintenance fee to five hundred dollars a month?” He sounded slighted. Jeff hadn’t read that far yet.
Ivan answered, “Plus twenty-five percent commission on all created ads. Because you’ll need to keep upgrading the site every time we put up a new one. And I understand that that’s a lot of work,” he admitted to them. “So keep reading.”
Jeff raised his head from his plate. He said, “So we get twenty-five percent of every ad that we create for the site?” It sounded like a sweet deal to him.
Ivan joked and said, “Unless you don’t want it. And not only that, if you actually sell an ad, you’ll pick up the other twenty-five percent commission that I’ll be offering to salespeople.” He continued, “Because I don’t have the time to do it all. So I’m planning on taking out ads for professional salespeople to help us.”
Paul and Jeff looked at each other with nothing to complain about. They could make thousands of dollars per month. So they continued to read through Ivan’s deal memo in silence.
Jeff added, “You know we can create our own help-wanted ads for the site.”
“That’s what I need,” Ivan told him. “How many different advertising sections or pages can we put up?”
Jeff started counting on his fingers. “We have the home page, the party page, restaurants, things to do, calendar, hotels, concerts, the picture gallery. Ah…”
Paul cut in and added, “Travel, sports—”
“Sports?” Ivan hadn’t seen that on the site yet.
“Yeah, we started building it a couple nights ago to add it to the search engines. The more subjects the site offers about San Diego, the more traffic we can direct to it.”
Ivan said, “So, we have about ten pages total on the site now? And we can get up to, what, three to five banners or pop-ups to rotate on each page?”
“Yeah, about that,” Paul mumbled. He finally began to eat his lobster tail. Ivan was paying for it all.
He said, “That’s pulling in anywhere from thirty to fifty thousand per month, at full website capacity?”
“At full capacity, yeah,” Paul answered him.
Ivan said, “Ironically, on the sports angle, I just did a meeting last night with a couple players from the San Diego Chargers about throwing a birthday party for their second-year cornerback. They want us to do it during their bye week next month. I’m teaming up with this party promoter Lucina Gallo on that.”
Jeff said, “Lucina Gallo? Dude, she’s like Brazilian or something?”
Ivan smiled and said, “Yeah, that’s her.”
Jeff got excited. He said, “I just read about her in 944 magazine. Man, she’s hot. You’re doing a Chargers party with her? She knows all the hottest girls, too.”
Paul grinned. “We’ll be there bright and early with the cameras out.”
IVAN AND LUCINA RECEIVED the twenty thousand dollars cash from the group of Chargers that next week and went right to work preparing for the “Rights of Passage Birthday Bash at the Waterview.” It was to take place at a hotel venue off the San Diego Bay that held exactly three thousand in its grand ballroom. Lucina worked out a three-event deal with the management to help drive traffic back to their renovated hotel. She and Ivan then paid for an aggressive radio campaign. They printed ten thousand flyers to work the entire San Diego region, including the military bases. They set up the catering. They contracted a popular radio DJ for additional promotion, while still adding Red Face Lion to the flyer and website as a co-DJ—a deal Ivan had pushed in order to bring his young entrepreneur more marketing exposure. They sent out several email blasts, hired extra security for the star athletes, and paid for Lucina’s list of “girls,” for an exact budget of twelve thousand dollars.
“I told you,” Lucina gloated to Ivan.
Ivan grinned and was pleased to pocket his half of the eight thousand in cash that was left.
Lucina also had him post some of the more glamorous party photos of her and her girls on his website to solidify her crowd. Jeff and Paul were more than happy to do that. And they had finally talked Ivan into using a few imagery-branding photos of himself on the site.
“Trust us, Ivan. We want to make you the King Kong of the San Diego promotions game,” Jeff stated to him. “So just sit back, relax, and ride the wave.”
Ivan and Lucina rode the wave of their first major Saturday-night party to the tune of twenty-three hundred general paying customers, and another two hundred who paid double for VIP status. Including the athletes and their entourages, the place was packed to near capacity with a multicultural crowd. Hundreds more were turned away at the door.
Jeff and Paul documented it all with their digital cameras, especially the diversity of the crowd. They explained to Ivan that it was time to stretch to the largest possible audience for the website, particularly when dealing with San Diego–based advertisers. So Ivan finally agreed to it. He had no choice. Money was money.
“Now, this is a fucking party, man!” Jeff exclaimed. He even took pictures of the disgruntled crowd who never made it in.
The wide-open ballroom had an elevated DJ platform at center stage, giant speakers in the corners of the dance floor, catered food against the left and right walls, and tables and chairs surrounding the edges of the room. The VIP areas were roped off with security to the left and right sides of the DJ booth, with more expensive catering, more tables and chairs, and large, comfortable sofas for the athletes and their special guests to relax in. Two bars were stationed at opposite ends of the VIP, and a third bar was stationed near the general entrance.
All night long, Lucina dragged Ivan around the room and introduced him to the important notables within the crowd. She wanted to make sure that everyone knew who he was for their next big event. She had no interest in him playing the behind-the-scenes partner. She needed the money people to feel comfortable with him for their next pitch.
“Hey, this is new my partner in crime, I-van Da-vid from L.A. And we’re gon’ to be do-ing lots of big part-ies to-gether. So make sure you add your email addresses to his website at ID-Promo-tions-.com. It’s a won-der-ful website for you to promote all of your biz-nes-ses.”
Over and over again, she repeated her introductions like a seductive robot, while adding touches of improvisation to her script whenever needed. Ivan did his best to keep smiling and talking his way into the memory banks of each new potential client. And at the grand moment of the party, Perry Browning, the hulking defensive end, stormed center stage in front of the DJ booth and grabbed the microphone to address the crowd in a near-drunken stupor.
“Yo, we wanna thank everybody for coming out here tonight and sharing this rights-of-passage party for my man Zee-Dog.”
“Yeeaah!” the crowd cheered him.
“Whoop, whoop, whoop!” the football players yelled.
“Go, Zee-Dog!” Lucina’s girls filled in.
Lucina made her way next to Zachary in his dark blue jeans, sports jacket, and eye-catching jewelry before he was called onto the stage.
Perry said, “But you know what, we’re a year late with this one, ’cause my man ain’t a rookie no more. That was last year. But anyway…hey, Zee-Dog, come up here and say something to the people, man. Represent Chicago. And tell them how you plan to break your interceptions record this year. He got three in our first five games already.”
Lucina held on to Zachary’s hand at that exact moment. She told him, “Make sure you thank Lucina and I-van for the par-ty.” She said it with authority and made sure that Zachary made eye contact with her before she released his hand.
Zee-Dog looked at her and then to Ivan, who was standing nearby. He grinned and nodded to both of them. “Oh, I got you. I know what time it is.”
He walked up onstage as the crowd and his teammates cheered him on.
Ivan stood there and wondered if Zachary would do what Lucina had told him.
Knowing these football players, he’ll probably thank everybody and his momma first, and then plug us in last, if he even remembers, Ivan assumed as he looked on in curiosity.
However, Zee-Dog flipped the script at the microphone and thanked them first.
“Hey, um, before I even talk about all that, I want to thank my girl Lucina Gallo over here, for putting on this hot-ass party for me, right.”
“YEEAAAHHH!” the crowd yelled even louder.
Perry grabbed the microphone back from him and belted, “Oh, yeah! Everybody knows Lucina. Hey, come on up here, girl. And bring your boy Ivan with you.”
He then gave the microphone back to Zee-Dog to help Lucina up. Lucina grabbed Ivan’s hand and pulled him along with her.
Oh, shit! Ivan panicked. Here we go again. He felt for sure that he could play the background, with so many celebrity football players in the house. But it was not to happen.
Zee-Dog said, “I wanna thank my teammates from the Chargers: the ‘Shockwave’ defense.”
“THE SHOCK-W-A-A-A-AVE!” one of the football players yelled at the top of his lungs.
“That’s ‘The Big Bad Hitta,’ Herman Seaford, over there,” Zee-dog responded to him with a laugh. “He’s going for twenty sacks this year.”
“Whoop, whoop, whoop!” the rest of the Chargers teammates hollered again.
By that time, Lucina and Ivan had reached him at center stage. Zee-Dog acknowledged them. He said, “Yeah, let my girl Lucina say something before we get back to this party.”
But instead of Lucina saying anything to the crowd, she told Ivan, “Just thank every-one and talk about your website.”
Ivan stood there confused as hell as she passed the microphone directly over to him.
FUCK! he screamed to himself. Nearly three thousand people were waiting, watching, and listening. Ivan immediately thought of hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons and his famous underscored sign-off from HBO’s Def Comedy Jam. The thought just jumped into Ivan’s head. Be short and get it the hell over with!
He opened his mouth to the crowd, with his heartbeat thundering inside his chest again. He said, “I want to thank everybody for coming out tonight. I’m Ivan David from IDPromotions.com. And make sure you sign our email list for the next big party promotion.”
Then he raised two fingers of his right hand with the microphone in his left and added, “Peace out,” before pointing with his index finger and concluding, “Party on.”
