Posts Tagged ‘pay rise’
Galley Duty
You know you’re a network marketer when you start stalking prospects.
I don’t mean crawling on your belly through the heather with a spyglass and a rifle. I mean that you just listen to them in a different way – always waiting for the right moment.
I waited all afternoon for it yesterday- but then I had all afternoon to wait: Mike and I were shut in the kitchen together – or rather “the galley”, this being the yacht club. Mike is the chef and I was volunteered for the afternoon while three of my children charged up and down the river in sailing dinghies before joining the other 70 young sailors in launching themselves en masse at my display of cakes and buns.
But before that there was the period of calm during which Mike and I methodically filled tray after tray with tuna and mayonnaise, egg and mayonnaise, thai chicken, ham and tomato, sponge cake, fruit cake, coffee and walnut and so on.
Dabbing a pinch of cress onto my umpteenth egg mayonnaise roll, I asked: “What do you do the rest of the time? Is this a catering business for you?”
And he was off: How this was it. How he had been in the Army Catering Corps so he had his army pension and how his wife worked part-time in M&S. They were both part-timers. They didn’t make a fortunute but it did mean they got to see more of each other.
At that moment there were two honks on the hooter in the crow’s nest above hour heads.
“That wasn’t two hoots, was it?” said Mike, suddenly alert. “That’s the signal for a shortened course… and we’re not nearly ready!”
The next hour flew by in a blur young red faces at the hatch, rolls, cakes and fizzy drinks – and all the while I was thinking about Mike and his wife and their modest income and what I could do for them.
Of course the next time things quietened down, it was his turn to ask me: “So what do you do?”
So I told him what I used to do – and how I retired too early – and how that turned out to be a mistake. And that gave me the chance to say: “Mind you, it turned out to be a blessing in the end. Because if I hadn’t been out of work, I’d never have started what I do now – which is brilliant because: Get this. I get a pay rise every month.”
He paused for the first time. He was actually motionless, his knife poised over a Victoria sandwich the size of Wales. It occurred to me it was the first time I’d seen him stop.
“Pay rise every month?” he said.
“Yup.”
“How does that work, then?”
It would have been a great moment if it hadn’t been for a nine year old in an oversized lifejacket suddenly wanting an ice cream that whistled. In fact, as the afternoon wore on, I realised that I was always going to be sabotaged by these young sailors.
But actually it worked out rather well. Because the great danger is in telling people too much. Do that and they can make a decision before they’ve seen the full picture presented to them proplerly. As it was he got little tasters in dribs and drabs: “So how do they save money? So every month you’ve got more poeple paying you? And it’s a sort of pyramid?”
I’ve grown to love that one: “Absolutely. It just grows and grows and you’ve no idea where it’s going to go. I’ve got people in Scotland and the West country – all over the place: All telling their friends about it and I don’t even know most of them!”
“Sounds amazing.”
So when we had loaded the diswasher for the fiftieth time and stacked the trays and wiped the surfaces, it was not so very hard for me to say: “Tell you what. Doing what you do, talking to people, you could earn a pay rise every month too. Now I’m not saying it would suit you. It might be for you and it might not. But do you like to keep your business options open? Would you like me to give you something to look at?”
And he said he would. So then I asked him for his surname and his mobile number and once I had them written down, I carefully drew out one of our company DVDs and handed it to him with some ceremony.
I just managed it before a 12 year old appeared at the door complaining that all his dry clothes were locked in my car…