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The two dried-up pieces of pizza flopped into the kitchen waste bin – joint victims of my new determination to be really, really helpful.
Unfortunately this only lasted as long as it took my wife to come in and ask what had happened to our son’s packed lunch.
The ensuing discussion about helpfulness could have left me feeling grumpy – if it hadn’t been for what happened last night: Browsing on Networkerplus, I discovered that “The Last Lecture” is available on YouTube. I had no idea it had ever been filmed. It was certainly my all-time favourite book.
If you don’t know about this phenomenon, search for Randy Pausch The Last Lecture. Believe me this is one of the most powerful stories you will ever experience and it certainly changes your view of the day ahead.
And today it did that for me. I put the pizza behind me and set out to do my wife a good turn by getting her balding tyres checked. But no sooner had the guy in the tyre centre started looking up delivery times for new ones than the phone rang. He then spent the next five minutes talking to someone else. Meanwhile it turned out I had left the car blocking the entrance. Would I move it? Would I have needed to move it if the guy hadn’t been talking to someone else for the last five minutes???
But I had a new view of the day. Of course I would move it.
And what goes around comes around: The van that needed to get into the tyre bay had a mobile phone number on the side. Instinctively I started to send a text but then I thought: “Why not go and talk to the driver? He’s probably gong to be hanging around as well – after all the tyre guy is still talking on the phone.”
So I went over and got started on the script I learned on Monday’s Advanced Leadership course.
And guess what, the driver said he was always ready to look at new business ideas.
In fact, what he said was: “Actually I was thinking of giving up the building game. There’s no money in it any more and quite honestly I’m fed up with the hassle.”
“So how soon will you be able to watch that?” I asked him, refusing to let go of the DVD until I had an answer.
“This afternoon, ” he said.

The little old lady cancelled at the last minute. They do that. Little old ladies are rarely open-minded.
So there I was fifteen miles from home and wondering what to do with myself for an hour.
A small voice in the back of my head announced: “Find someone else to talk to.”
I drove on and came to a dry cleaners. That would do.
“Hello, is this your business,” I said brightly to the girl behind the counter. Clearly it wasn’t.
She said so. She said the owners were in Colchester. Then a man in his 60s came in with “Entrepreneur” written all over him. It turned out he was the owner – or at least he was until the end of the week. He’d sold the business. He was retiring.
“That’s great,” I said, changing horses in mid-stride. “Is your pension big enough for all the things you want to do or would you be open to looking at a way to increase it. It would take me five minutes to show you. Want to see it?”
He was not sure. He had a draw-down pension whatever that may be. You could see the internal struggle going on: The dignified sceptic versus the successful businessman always open to new ideas.
I was very proud of the way I stuck to my guns. If he wanted to know any more about it, I would have to show him and that would take five minutes.
It was quite fun to have him wheedling away, too proud to ask for a presentation but too curious to leave it alone. In the end he said: “All right come round” and I walked round to the back of the building and into a huge hanger of a place with industrial washing machines dotted about in a somewhat haphazard fashion appropriate to a business which was now someone else’s problem.
I balanced my presenter on to of a spin dryer the size of car. We were there for an hour.
I would like to be able to say he joined but that wasn’t what happened.
What did happen was that I walked out with the phone number for his brother. Apparently his brother is good at spotting opportunities – and if he’s good enough for the brother, it would be good enough for my new friend too.
So I’m looking forward to helping them both get started. Who said that little old ladies are a waste of time?

There was water all over the bathroom floor. The basin was leaking. I just knew this would happen on a Saturday.

This is your basic nightmare when you do Bed and Breakfast. Normally our little sideline is completely trouble free – ever since we moved the guests into the garage, christened it “The Studio” and told them what fun it would be to get their own breakfast.

But when you have water all over the bathroom floor, something has to be done about it – and fast.

I started calling plumbers. Fortunately I have a long list of plumbers – all those who looked at my business and turned it down because they didn’t have enough time. Now I rang them again, leaving desperate messages one after another…

Now, in order to ensure that readers’ stress levels do not get out of hand, I must tell you that the first one I called rang back within ten minutes, came round the fixed the leak. But that’s not the point of the story.

The point of the story is that I then ended up talking to all those plumbers who had looked at the business years ago and who I had now phoned in a blind panic. To a man, they called back. The conversations went something like this: “Thanks for getting back to me but I’ve found someone now. Yes, you panic don’t you… I expect you get that a lot.

“Actually, come to think of it, the last time we talked, do you remember what it was about? It was about you making money in your spare time. Tell me, are you in the same situation financially or did you find a way to increase your income?”

Of course, like every other traditional  business, they were feeling the effects of the recession. So I was able to say: “We’ve got an open evening in Ipswich on Monday, how do you fancy coming? Things have changed a lot since you last looked at it. For instance now we’re in partnership with Sainsbury’s and Boots and B&Q and Mothercare.”

The last time I did this, there was a silence on the other end of the line. Then: “What do you mean a partnership.”

So I did my three minute thing. I told him how we had 200 people in the club whose discounts were more than their bills so they paid nothing at all. I told him how most people now saved between  20% and 30%.

He was mesmerised – you can tell when someone is mesmerised. As it turns out he has a function to go to at his daughters’s school on Monday night. But he wanted me to send him something to look at .

Now I don’t know whether the plumber is going to join. But looking at my notes, I discover that he knows the company of old. He’s been a plumber for eight years and hates chasing the money. Moreover, he wants to spend more time playing golf and retire early…

Do you think it was fortuitous that the basin leaked?

What I’m wondering now is whether it would be ethical to invent a completely fictitious emergency with the fuse box and ring all the electricians who are still thinking about it… or a computer crash and ring IT specialists…

The possibilities are limitiless!

There’s a story going round of a distributor who gave a flyer to an RAC salesman. The RAC man calmly reached under his kiosk  and pulled out a handful of the same flyers.

“People keep giving me these things,” he said. “Nobody’s told me what it’s about.”

So the distributor told him – and he joined.

Sometimes we forget that this is a word-of-mouth business.

I was thinking this when I went to drop my children at their after school maths class. I was ready to settle down to make 20 minutes of calls while they wrestled with long division when I noticed, in the next car, another father looking bored. The trouble was that I recognised him – and there’s nothing worse than pitching the same people again and again. It gets you a reputation for being annoying.

So instead, I said: “Did I give you one of my pigs?”

I held it up for him to see.

He looked. He said “Yes.”

“Did you look at it?”

He smiled: “No.”

“D’you want me to tell you about it. It takes a minute,” I asked.

“OK.”

And so I did – and guess what, he runs a convenience store and not only is he fed up with the cost of running all the chillers and freezers but he’s already excited about making an extra income off every one of his existing customers – not to mention all the sales reps who call on him every day.

What do they say? Never presume, never assume…

He knew my name. He knew my wife’s name. He knew everything about us – and all I knew about him was that I had never seen him before – but then maybe he hadn’t been wearing a yellow day-glo running jacket last time.

Being somewhat embarrassed by my chronic inability to show enough interest in other people to remember their names (my wife’s diagnosis) I went along with the pantomime, nodding and smiling as we walked side by side along the river path – all the while hoping for some sort of clue. But then he rescued me by saying: “What’s all this Make Money – Save Money”?

Thank heavens for the badge.

“Ah, well,” I began, warming at once to the theme. “That’s my little part time thingy. It’s my major source of income now.”

And then, of course he asked what it was and so I had to tell him… and ask him if he was more interested in saving money or making money… and of course he said “both” and then I had to give him a DVD. But you know what the awful thing was? Because I didn’t like to admit I didn’t know his name, I couldn’t really ask for it. So now I have no way of getting back to him to find out what he liked best!

Never mind I did better with the man in the Mini. The Mini has been making peculiar clonking noises for some months and it seemed like a good idea to get it checked out before a wheel fell off. So I took it round to the BMW garage so that their troubleshooter could drive me round the block with his ear cocked. Yes, there was definitely a clonk, he concluded.

Then on the way back, he pulled up at some traffic lights. I looked out of the window. The woman in the next car was reading the stickers on the side. I knew she was reading because her lips were moving. I wound down the window but at that moment the lights changed.

“Too late,” I said. ” I was going to give her a card. Actually I was thinking of getting the stickers changed. On the new Minis they say: “Save 30% or more on your household bills”.

“Really,” said the troubleshooter. “How do you do that?”

So I had to tell him. But he didn’t think it would work for him: “I expect you have to have your own home.”

Apparently he was renting.

Was that from choice or because of the mortgage famine?

“And the deposit,” he said.

I nodded sympathetically: “Yes, I know what you mean. It’s criminal what they ask now… Tell you what. Maybe I could help: Would you be open to looking at ways of making an additional income alongside what you do already.”

And so he’s got a DVD too – and this time, I’ve got his number.

This sign on the door said: “No reps without an appointment”.

But I had already rung the bell. It never occurred to me that I might be considered a “rep”. I don’t think of myself as selling anything. I just show people how they can save money on what they’ve already bought. Is that the same thing?

I was still wondering about it when the door opened onto a lobby decorated with finger paintings. This was the nursery school in the “light industrial” complex next to the Golf Club where we  hold a training session once a month. Being a conscientious trainer, I always allow an extra hour for the journey and try and find something useful to do when I get there rather than using up the time at the other end. On this occasion I had set myself to go round to all the small businesses to see if they wanted to hear about increasing their profits.

Now all I could do was apologise and say: “I’m not sure if I’m a “rep”. What do you think?”

The young woman who answered the door had no idea. All she could do was call for the manager. This was probably for the best. She could go back to wiping little noses.

“Am I a rep?” I asked the manager.

“I don’t know,” she said. “What do you do?”

Ah well now, there’s a question which demands and answer: “Well I go round local businesses showing them how to increase their profits. It takes me one minute. D’you want to hear it?”

That’s the magic of one minute. Everyone says “yes” – and so did she.

And of course after one minute she wanted to know more and after three minutes, she was giving me the name of the owner and after five we had established that she was open to looking at ways of making money and I had her mobile phone number.

And I still didn’t know whether I was a “rep”.  Never mind, there was someone else I could ask. I walked round the corner and into some sort of electronics company – so modern that they didn’t even have a receptionist; just a phone with a notice above it telling visitors which extension to ring. I rang.

“Hello,” I said brightly when a slightly distracted voice answered. “Are you the proprietor?” People love being asked this as if being mistaken for the proprietor somehow confers some sort of distinction on the lowliest of underlings. He bustled off to find the proprietor.

The proprietor arrived. He had left a customer on the shop floor, he said – and yet he had found the time to meet someone he’d never heard of who had come to show him how to increase his profits – interesting, that…

Well, since I said it would only take a minute, we sat down in the lobby and I told him what we had. Now we have an arrangement that next time I’m up there I’ll go in and collect copies of his bills.

And all I did was ask!

Now I know why they give us Minis. This is because they’re made by BMW and the BMW garage is quite an experience. Not only do they wash your car every time but they send you home in a taxi – and then send another one to pick you up. Also, the taxi drivers rightly assume that anyone with their car in a BMW main dealership is doing pretty well.

This is why I have been writing about taxi drivers so much – that and the fact that the garage can’t figure out why the engine warning light keeps coming on.

Anyway there I was with the latest taxi driver and this is how the conversation went:

Me: “Is this full time for you – driving?”

Driver: “Yup, I used to be a brickie but I had a heart attack.”

“I expect this is less stressful – that’s good isn’t it?”

“Less stressful but it’s 80 hours a week.”

“Good heavens”

… this went on for some time until eventually I said: “I ought to tell you about what I do.”

“What’s that then?”

“Well I’ve got my own business. I work with this discount club. They’re listed on the London Stock Exchange but they don’t advertise. It’s all done by word of mouth. What they do is shrink the bills for all their members. New members joining now find their bills shrink by around 30% after the second month and then go on shrinking to about half their usual size within a year.

“Also it’s very easy to recommend this club by word of mouth because they come topl in the reviews in Which? Magazine. Would you like to know how they do it?”

“How?”

“Well the thing about the club is that it’s rather exclusive – you can only join it if you’re invited by someone who’s in it – and we only invite people who we think are going to pay the bills. Now, do you think that makes our members rather special? Do you think that big shops like Mothercare and Boots and Debenhams and Sainsburys would like to see those sorts of people coming through their doors – the sort who see something on a shelf and say: ‘I like that. I’m going to buy it. I can afford it.’

“Too right they would – and the shops are prepared to pay for to get them in. They pay 5% of what the member spends and they send that to the discount club – who knock it off the member’s bill.”

I had his attention by this time. I went on: “Now the arithmetic is rather clever. Let’s take the average family. For  their shopping and petrol, their clothes, their sports goods, their DIY, what do you suppose they spend:  £!,000 a month? Yes, at least. And the same family paying their utility bills – what, £150 a month?

“Well 5% of £1,000 is £50, right?  And £50 deducted from a £150 utility bill is 30%, right? So that’s how their bill shrinks by 30% every month. That’s 30% off their electricity, 30% off their gas – 30% off their phones and so on. For some people, the discount is bigger than their bill so they don’t pay anthing at all!”

The driver was nodding by this time. He was saying quietly:”Amazing!”

I continued, matter-of-factly: “Now the really clever thing is this: What would happen if British Gas or BT or Vodafone reduced their prices by 30%? How long do you think they could stay in business? But our 30% doesn’t come out of the company coffers. It comes from Debenhams and Argos and Mothercare and Sainsburys and the rest.

“And do you think that if our members are getting that much off their bills every month they’re going to0 tell anyone – that’s right, of course they are! In fact they’re encouraged to tell their friends. Typically, if they tell ten friends they get another 20% off – now they’ve got 50% off! So they pay only half their electricity bill every month – half their gas bill…”

As always seems to happen, he was driving more and more slowly. By the time we reached the garage, I’d told him a bit about the money and now he’s got a DVD and we’ll talk again on Monday.

The only bad news is that I think they’ve fixed the car…

It can be embarrasing, the badge. After all, how many people would feel entirely comfortable wearing a bright yellow proclamation on their lapel: “Save Money… Make Money – Ask Me How!”

Or “Lose weight now!”… or whatever it is your company happens to do.

But there comes a time, after a while, when you’re more embarrassed about not wearing it. That day comes when you realise just what network marketing can do for you.

You see, to begin with – maybe for the first two or three years, you don’t really know.

Oh, you think you know – you’ve read the company compensation plan, you’ve seen the leaders get up at the conventions and talk about their sports cars and homes abroad – but you don’t have that deep-down conviction that it’s going to happen to you.

There will always be a small voice telling you not to make a fool of yourself. There will always be moments when you feel awkward about dropping your business into the conversation. You talk about something else instead – as if, deep down, you believe that the real way to long-term wealth is to have a job like everyone else and this network marketing thing is only a game.

Until one day when you look at your commission statement and it dawns on you that network marketing does work. That this is going to pay you more than any of your  friends who rely on ordinary jobs – and it will pay you in a way they will never get paid… forever.

I have someone in my team who had a badge made which says: “I have the best job in the world”. When people ask him why, he looks them straight in the eye and says: “Because I get paid forever“.

And he puts such passion into the word “forever” that they just have to know more.

It’s as if this is not a badge at all. It’s a sheild and it gives him a magical protection from all the negative people he’s going to meet during his day. It makes him invincible.

On Friday I discovered exactly what he means. I had an appointment fixed for the afternoon – a couple I had met at our “Win-a-Mini” in the garden centre. They said they wanted to enter our free draw. They were happpy to answer my six quick questions – and they ended up saying they would like me to come round and show them how to shrink their household bills by 30% or more. They even said they were serious about shrinking their bills.

And then they got cold feet: “”We’ve thought about it and we don’t want to change,” said the husband on the phone.

Now, I could have let that spoil my day. But I had my badge – and if anyone asks me why I wear that stupid badge, I tell them: “This badge recognises the fact that I’m in partnership with the top-performing company on the premier stock exchange in the world.”

(I’d like to add “and what do you do?” But I want to make friends not enemies!”

One way and another it did’t bother me that the man from the Win-a-Mini had changed his mind. But, more than that, the magic of the badge was still at work. Ten minutes later he called again: “I’ve spoken to a friend and it turns out that she’d a member of your club. She says it’s brilliant. So you can come round after all if you like.”

So I did. And of course it’s the converts who make the most enthusiastic members. We went through our Cashback Challenge and worked out that he would save 40% on his bills – and that was without the extra 20% he reckons he can get when he introduces ten of his friends.

Then it turned out that the retirement he had been talking about doesn’t start until June – and he works as a painter and decorator… and of course B&Q is one of our Cashback partners. Did he think he could buy all his paint there?

I reckon that between now and June there will be some months when my new member joins the 200 who pay nothing at all for their gas, electricity, phone, broadband or mobiles.

And in June he’s going to think about being a distributor as well.

And yes, even though I’m sitting at home on a Sunday morning, I’m wearing my badge. Why not? It makes me feel good.

They say you never know where your next distributor coming  from. What they don’t warn you is that sometimes the distributor doesn’t know either.

It was late in the evening and I was doing nothing more productive than trying to find the email confirmation from Amazon – had they received my son’t faulty Christmas present? This is tiresome stuff and any distraction will do. The red light on the Blackberry started flashing: An email saying that somewhere someone had downloaded an information pack from the personalised website my company helpfully provides for me.

I rang the number immediately. For one thing it would be more fun than chasing Amazon. I found myself talking to a man in High Wycombe.

And here’s an interesting point. When I started, I would always give people an hour to read through their information pack. The trouble with that is sometimes you never get them on the phone at all. And this was a classic example.

“I see you’ve downloaded an information pack,” I said brightly.

“Have I?”

Yes, you were on the internet looking at our business opportunity… a way of making money in your spare time… working from home…”

“I don’t know…”

- We’ve got a right one here…

“You left your details on my site.”

“Well I’ve been surfing the interenet. I looked at lots of sites.”

I took a deep breath: “Well are you interested in making some extra money.”

“Always interested.”

So we started from basics and I told him what I had. And as the conversation developed it transpired that this person was not an idiot after all. He owned two shops. He began to get ahead of me. He asked questions that revealed an astute businessman. When I asked him what he would do with, say, an extra £500 a month, he replied – quick as a flash: “Pay my tax bill.”

Idiots who surf the internet late at night leaving their details on websites with no more thought than a vandal in a hoody spraying his name on a wall, do not have tax bills.

So now he is looking at the website – and on purpose this time. We’ll talk again this evening.

And here’s the point of this little parable: Was it pure luck or as it what I like to call “forces at work”. As Cal says in Titanic: ” A real man makes his own luck” and I know exactly where this one came from.

On Monday night I had been driving home from Cambridge. It was late and I stopped for petrol. I gave the people behind the tills a piggy card each. I was anxious to get home. But I had something to do: On my Business Developmen Plan (see the panel on the right) I had set myself a target of giving out two DVDs during the day – and here we were at 10.30 at night and I’d only given out one. And I only give DVDs to people who for some inexplicable reason strike me as likely to make good use of them.

So I sat in the car and waited. It was a full five minutes before another car pulled in. The driver got out: Unshaven, overweight, scruffy. He paid for his petrol and returned to his car with an armfull of crisps and chocolate bars. People with no self-discipline do not make good distributors.

I continued to wait.

Then up comes a new Audi. The man in the driver’s seat was in shirtsleeves and a tie. on a hook behind his head was his jacket on a hanger. I stepped out and went over: “Good evening, I wonder if you could do me a favour…”

“If I can.”

“Every day I give two of these DVDs to people who I think may watch them. It makes me rich and famous and so far today I’ve only given out one. If I gave this to you would you watch it?”

He looked at it: “What’s it about.”

“It’s about money.”

“Well if it’s about money, I’ll watch it.”

Now I am quite sure that he is not the man who surfed the internet and ended up on the phone on Tuesday night. But I am equally sure that in some peculiar way, if I had not put in that ten minutes of extra effort on Monday night, then Tuesday would not have reaped its rewards.

Just call it Forces at Work.

And then she hugged me. It was all rather weird.

There I was on the M25 going nowhere and, I suppose, rather inattentive while I fiddled with CDs. Anyway I must have taken my foot off the brake because the next thing I knew, there was a gentle bump and I had rolled into the car in front.

Now this was so gentle it could not possibly have caused any damage but I did the decent thing and got out (snarling up all the traffic for ten miles behind me). In the driver’s seat of the car in front a woman sat motionless. Was this suppressed road rage? Was she counting to ten to prevent herself from leaping out and attacking me with the jack-handle?

In the end she got out very calmly, walked over to me and put her arm round my waist.

This has never happened to me before – well not as a result of a bump on the M25.

Wondering what the queue of drivers behind us might think, I suggested she move her car forward a bit so we could look at the damage. It turned out to be a mildly cracked number plate on her car and nothing on mine. I offered to buy her a new numberplate if she wanted one. Obvioiusly I would need to give her my name and phone number and I just so happen to keep a little container of business cards stuck to the side of the Mini.

Clearly so pleased with this, she now put both arms round me and gave me a big hug, standing there beside the growing traffic jam. If you have attended Big Al’s Colours Seminar you will have realised by now that my new friend is a a “yellow”.

“Look I’ve got just the thing for you,” I told her, pulling out a DVD from the door pocket. “Have a look at this. We’re a really happy, smiley bunch. You’d fit right in…”

“Oo, that sounds fun,” she said.

And with that we got back into our cars.

I wonder if she’ll ring me – and whether it will be about a new number plate or the business opportunity… or whether she’ll want another hug.

One way and another, I shall never think of the M25 in quite the same way again.