Pecking Order, page 35
She said, “I’m parking down the street from your apartment. Okay? Are you happy now?”
Ivan smiled. He said, “A man is always happy to see a pretty girl when he’s feeling it late at night.”
“Yeah, whatever. So…I guess I’ll be there in a minute.”
Seventeen
The Bosses
IVAN CALLED an emergency staff meeting at his IDPromotions.com office for Sunday evening. Once everyone had gathered there after eight PM, he made a short, informative speech about his objectives for the week.
“Okay, as I explained to everyone last week, or for the last couple of weeks, our big networking event last night was not just a birthday party but a gigantic key to a big door of new opportunities. We have nearly a thousand business cards and email addresses from the event, and we need to work hard and fast all this week to connect the dots for new advertisers, sponsors, spotlight stories, and new business associates.”
He said, “We want to hit it and hit it hard with plenty of sugar. That means we want to make sure that everyone enjoyed themselves first, and then we reiterate all of our strengths and services here at I.D. Promotions. Eddie K. will guide all of our sales staff on the ad and sponsorship rates, as well as our availabilities for the month, the quarter, and for the year. Ava Tate will guide all of our new editorial content. And Jeff and Paul will design up to six new web pages, as well as upgrade our existing pages.”
“Whew, sounds like a whole lot of work this week,” Jeff commented.
Ivan said, “And we may not be able to finish everything this week, but since it is such a heavy load on all of us, I’ve forced myself to allow the idea of giving everyone a thousand-dollar bonus.”
That idea cheered his staff up immediately. They exclaimed it in the room.
“Yeah! All right! I can surely use it!”
Ivan added, “Now, some of us are going to be doing more work than others, but it’s up to all of us to work together as a team to make sure that everyone gives the proper effort that we’ll need to pull this week off.”
After his staff address, Ivan had a few private words with Eddie upstairs in his back office.
Eddie smiled and said, “That was quite another speech from you, Ivan. You’re impressing me more and more every day.”
Ivan didn’t thank him for the compliment. Instead, he told him, “I’ve been thinking all day about the possibilities of this company, Eddie. And it’s time to jump on this fast horse and ride it all the way now. So, for the people who can’t take the pace, I need to know who they are as soon as possible.”
Eddie K. nodded and understood him. He said, “I guess this’ll be the last paycheck for a lot of them, hunh?”
Ivan just stared at him. His motives were obvious to a sales veteran like Eddie.
Ivan said, “I’m just being fair with them, more than fair. And I’m also being realistic. This is a serious company now. So I need people who are really ready to work.”
Eddie grinned and said, “I know.”
“You also know that I can’t continue to serve two masters,” Ivan confided in him. “I need to get out there and make these bigger deals happen all day long now. I can’t do it just over lunch hours.
So I’m trying to figure out how I can create a consultant position with Hutch and Mitchell, like you did with the newspaper.”
Eddie told him, “You just ask them for it. And after what you just pulled together last night, I can’t see how any company in their right mind could turn you down. So you simply give them an offer that they can’t refuse.” He said, “But honesty is the best policy.”
Ivan thought it over and nodded. “Thanks, man. That’s exactly what I need to do. The time is now.”
MOVING ON from a position of employment that Ivan had held over the past six years of his life was not an easy thing to do.
What if they tell me no? he pondered at his Hutch & Mitchell desk that Monday morning. Then I’ll be out on my own with no big name protection behind me…But if I’m really ready to take my company seriously, then my own name should mean something.
He then looked around at his surroundings and realized, Here I am, sitting at a damn cubicle, when I just brought together billions of dollars all in one room. What the hell am I doing here?
He continued to daydream at his desk as the executive secretary passed behind him. Ivan was so deep in thought that he never noticed the older white woman spying on him that morning. Once she witnessed the evidence she needed, she walked right up to John Hutch’s closed office door and knocked before he responded to her.
“Who is it?”
“It’s Edith.”
“Come on in.”
When she walked in, Barry Mitchell was already in the room, discussing the pressing issue with his partner.
“So, what does Ivan look like today?” John asked her.
Edith took a breath and said, “He looks like he’s on cloud nine. He’s definitely thinking about something other than tax laws this morning.”
John nodded to her. “Thank you very much, Edith. Can you close the door on your way back out?”
“Oh, certainly.”
As soon as she left the room, John suggested to Barry, “So, we both take him out to dinner, and we get everything out in the open.”
Barry took a breath of his own. He said, “I still think we’re jumping the gun a bit, but I guess we don’t have a choice now, do we?”
John said, “All it is, is a conversation. And if you’re right, you’re right. But if I’m right, then we need to have a plan ready.”
IVAN MET with his bosses for dinner at a sushi restaurant in Poway, a far northeast section of San Diego. They sat in a dark booth near the back of the restaurant to limit the amount of noise and traffic around them. Ivan sat on one side of the booth, and his two bosses sat on the other.
John Hutch, with his light brown hair and cold blue eyes, figured they would move ahead of the game before Ivan could solidify any future plans. Barry Mitchell, with his warm brown eyes and darker hair, only wanted to hear what Ivan had to say for himself. And by the time they had met him for dinner that evening, Ivan had already come up with plenty of ideas of his own to discuss with them.
“Let us begin by saying that you put on a fabulous event this weekend, Ivan. Fabulous!” Barry commented first.
John only nodded in silent agreement.
“Thank you,” Ivan told them. “It was a real stretch trying to pull it all together on such short notice. But everything seemed to work in our favor, so I just went with it. They call it momentum, right?”
Ivan intended to speak openly with them while remaining friendly and loose. He wanted them both to know that he still liked them. They had been very fair to him.
John said, “Ivan, Barry and I will be in some very serious talks to close deals on at least eight new major clients from your event on Saturday evening. Now, we both understand that you’ll likely be bringing in your own list of new clients from the event as well. But it gets to a certain point where we all have to ask ourselves, ‘Is Ivan more important to us at the office, or out there closing deals?’”
They were taking the conversation exactly where Ivan needed for it to go. So he became cautious. He wanted to see what John and Barry would come up with on their own.
He looked over the table at Barry Mitchell to hear what he had to add.
Barry looked at him and shrugged. In his opinion, John was being a little too anxious.
“Well, you’re gonna make a lot of money off of these deals, Ivan, that’s for sure,” he commented with a chuckle. And he was saved by the food. At least five different sushi dishes arrived at their table, including white rice.
“Perfect timing,” John stated to their server. He said, “All of this talk about money makes me hungry. What about you, Ivan?”
Ivan was still trying to configure his angle. Big business was a chess game. He wanted to make sure he made all the right moves.
So John is pushing for a new deal, and Barry is pushing the brakes, he assessed of his two bosses.
Ivan smiled and reached to gather some of the sushi for his plate. He said, “Being hungry is natural. But we always want to make sure we eat the right foods. And I hear that sushi is good for you.”
He slid a piece of raw salmon into his mouth and chewed it down.
John and Barry began to fill their plates to eat as well.
Barry looked at a piece of fish before he ate it. He said, “Well, you have fish that swim in schools, and other fish who swim out on their own. Which one are you, Ivan?”
Ivan felt more comfortable with an assertive approach from Barry than a passive approach. A passive boss was much harder to read. But he could respond to the assertive approach with intellectual confidence.
“Well, every fish has to learn how to swim first. But I believe a dolphin is the most cooperative. They can swim in a school, a small group, in a pair, or break off and swim by themselves when they need to. So I would consider myself to be a dolphin.”
John frowned and said, “Dolphins are considered mammals, aren’t they?”
Ivan kept his poise. He said, “If they are, then I guess I’m not a fish at all. I’m just a mammal who happens to swim fast.”
After they shared a laugh, Barry said, “Actually, dolphins are a very social group of animals. And they are considered to be one of the most intelligent, dolphins and, ah…”
“Killer whales,” John filled in before taking another bite of raw fish. “The orcas.”
That wasn’t quite the answer Barry had been searching for, but it fit. Killer whales were known as the masters of the sea. Nevertheless, Ivan didn’t like the reference. So he tried to tone things down a bit.
“I’m definitely not one of those,” he commented.
“Not yet,” John argued, eating another piece of fish.
Barry said, “Well, killer whales can be social, too. By the way, they’re my favorite part of going to SeaWorld.”
On that note, Ivan had to get away from the table for a minute. He chuckled and stood up to excuse himself. “Yeah, let me go use the restroom.”
As soon as he walked away, Barry asked his partner, “What are you doing, John? Relax.”
John snapped, “Relax? Look, Barry, we need to get this kid to be honest with us. He’s not a damn dolphin, he’s a killer whale in training. So we’re either gonna feed him what he feels he’s worth, or he’s gonna eat up everything in the tank.”
Barry shook if off. He stopped and asked, “So, what are we gonna offer him now, a full partnership, John? This kid isn’t ready for that.”
“Well, we’re gonna have to offer him something, and fast. He’s already thinking about being in on the much bigger deals, I can assure you of that,” John insisted. He said, “This kid is looking at the whole ocean now. He’s just sitting over there biding his time.”
Barry didn’t have anything else to say. In his gut, he felt that Ivan could be a real star, but he had to see it first to believe it. He had gotten burned before by young businessmen who had not reached their full potential. So Barry now preferred to preach, pray, and wait, but not necessarily to believe.
John, on the other hand, was already sold on Ivan’s mastery. The straight numbers added up. He admired the young man, even. And he wasn’t done talking about him.
He said, “Think about it, Barry. Ivan pulls together over a billion dollars’ worth of executives for his twenty-ninth birthday, and then he comes back to work for us at a cubicle. Are you kidding me? I would be daydreaming, too, about my last damn days at work here.”
John stated, “So, Barry, when he comes back out of the restroom, I’m gonna ask him what he wants, and if he doesn’t tell us, then I don’t trust him anymore.”
Barry heard his partner loud and clear and kept his silence. The rest was up to Ivan.
INSIDE THE RESTROOM, Ivan zipped up his family jewels, walked away from the urinal, washed his hands at the sink, and took a deep breath before he stared at himself in the mirror. He then dried his hands with brown paper towels.
The truth is the best policy, he reminded himself. And since they’re out there waiting for me to give it to them, that’s what I need to do.
He took another deep breath and stated, “Let’s just get it over with.”
When he walked back out from the restroom, the restaurant looked twice as long and twice as wide, designed with Asian architecture and decorated with Asian artwork.
These Asians sure love some dragons and tigers. Ivan amused himself to lighten up his mood. He paced back toward his booth while taking everything in. Maybe I should try a full-blooded Asian girl next. But Filipinos are Asians, too, right?
All I know is Ashley got some wet shit, he told himself. I wonder if they’re all wet like that, with that extramoist skin of theirs. Even Chris is part Asian. I guess that’s my thing now.
By the time Ivan returned to his booth to face his bosses, he was completely loose again.
“So, what were we talking about?” he asked them.
Barry spoke up before John could. “Dolphins and killer whales.”
“Oh, yeah,” Ivan mumbled. Look, just go ahead and get it over with, he repeated to himself. He said, “But you know what, to be honest with you guys, over the past six months or so I’ve been thinking more like a businessman than just an accountant. And I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t thinking about following up on a lot of the business conversations I started on Saturday. But while I’m at the office all day, there’s just no time for me to do it. So what I came up with is a way to continue to represent myself as well as Hutch and Mitchell Accounting on a marketing and consultant basis.”
John looked straight at him. “Which is?”
“I’ll spend the majority of my time out in the field closing deals, while using the Hutch and Mitchell brand name just like I do now,” he explained. “But since I’m trying to close a lot more deals now for IDPromotions.com than I am as an accountant, I would like to borrow a strong tax and accounting advisor to take with me from the office.”
John winced and looked at Barry. Barry then looked back at Ivan.
He said, “So…you want us to allow you to do business deals for your own company, while one of our accountants advises your clients on the best tax benefits?”
“That way we introduce new clients to the excellent practices of Hutch and Mitchell, while I make them money in business,” he told them. He said, “That’s how I’ve been getting new clients. They know who I work for. And when they see me making money and protecting it, they naturally want to make money with me and protect theirs as well. And we don’t want them just thinking about April before they decide to use a good accountant.”
John and Barry looked at each other and began to laugh. Ivan was being honest and vicious, and there was nothing they could do about it. His methods had obviously worked.
“A killer whale,” John insisted. “And just out of curiosity, what guy at the office would you want as your personal tax advisor?”
“Mike Adams,” Ivan answered. “He’s the sharpest. And Mike being out in the field will eventually make him more valuable to the company. He’ll learn how to close deals for himself soon.”
John shook his head and said, “He’s our best auditor, and April’s right around the corner.”
“We’ll do it after April, then,” Ivan told them.
Barry asked him, “Why not take Chip on as your personal advisor? You two seem to get along well at the office.”
Ivan stopped and shook his head. He said, “Chip is…well, I could use Chip in other ways, but I’d rather have Mike for what I need. He’ll do more listening and analyzing.”
John just stared at him again. He agreed with him, of course. Chip Garrett was a slacker who needed to be supervised every step of the way. But Ivan was giving them a whole lot to think about.
Barry read John’s look and said, “Give us a few days to think this over.”
John then asked him, “And how much is this, ah, new position gonna cost us?”
Ivan said, “The twenty percent commission is still good on the new clients, but four hundred twenty thousand in base salary would earn me twenty-four thousand a month after taxes to cover my twenty-four/seven marketing and branding of Hutch and Mitchell Accounting out in the field.”
John looked at Barry and smiled. “Four hundred twenty thousand dollars?”
“That’s twenty-four thousand a month after taxes. Plus you’ll need to double Mike’s salary.”
John frowned and said, “Hell, you can pay him the extra out of your business. What, you’re negotiating for him, too, now?”
Ivan grinned it off and thought about it with a nod. “Okay, that’s fair.”
Barry repeated, “Give us a few days to think it over. In the meantime, get back out there and try and close out these deals before April.”
John smiled. He said, “It looks like we have some new hiring to do. But I’m gonna tell you something that’s very important for your career, Ivan. You learn to be who you are,” he told him. “If you’re a businessman, you be a businessman. If you’re a closer, you be a closer. And if you’re a killer whale, you be a killer whale.”
He continued, “I’ve been around quite a few people who try hard not to be who they are, and it usually doesn’t work. So when you’re out there deal-making, you remember to keep your integrity, but you do what you feel comfortable with doing. And that means that you may not close all of the deals that you want, but at least people know exactly who you are and where you stand. And that’s the way business is, Ivan. We don’t like surprises. We like to know exactly what we’re getting into and exactly who we’re dealing with.”
John was basically reiterating the honesty-is-the-best-policy approach. So Ivan nodded to him. “Thanks. I’ll make sure to remember that.”
A WEEK LATER, Thomas Jones had finally sold Ivan’s two real estate properties: one for $320,000, and the other for $310,000, netting Ivan $250,000 after Thomas’s 10 percent and additional closing fees.
