Out of the Ether
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.