When he was finally called into John Hutch’s office after four o’clock for his new salary discussions, Ivan was as cool and calm as a nighttime swimming pool.

Since John Hutch was the heavy on the business side of the company, he did the majority of the talking about the salary increase, just as Ivan had expected he would.

“I guess you already know why we’re meeting with you this afternoon, Ivan,” he stated. “You’ve been performing steadily with us over the past five years, but during these past few quarters, we’ve noticed that you’ve really turned the corner and decided to become a real go-getter for the company. And since our company is always interested in expanding our client base, we’d like to reward you for that.”

He went straight to the point, sitting behind his extralarge desk, while Barry sat in the second leather office chair to Ivan’s left.

John continued, “As we explained when we first hired you years ago, we typically like to pay our accountants more in commissions than we do in base salary. So with that in mind, we’ve decided to give you a substantial pay raise to a hundred and four thousand a year, plus a twenty percent commission on all new clients instead of ten.”

Ivan did the math and came up with roughly six thousand dollars a month after taxes. It was a dead-on estimate of what he figured Hutch & Mitchell would offer him. So he smiled and said, “That’s a generous pay raise, but I’m sure you both would like to know how I’ve been able to spark a new client base in the first place.”

Ivan was well aware of their commissions ideas. He used their model in his own business.

Barry spoke up. “Definitely. We were gonna get to that. Although we don’t always expect smart young guys like you to let us in on your methods,” he commented. He and his partner reasoned that if Ivan was indeed a gamer, he would have some counter-offers.

Ivan figured his website and promotional events brand was strong enough now to invite bigger fish to the party. So he told them, “Actually, I have no problem telling you my methods. I’ve basically started a promotional website and network party vehicle where a small staff and I have been able to generate an average of ten thousand unique hits a day and more than eighty thousand daily impressions. And through a lot of meeting and greeting at the various promoted parties and events around San Diego, I’ve been able to win enough faith and confidence from some of the movers and shakers here that they trust me in their financial affairs, which, of course, includes their accounting services at Hutch and Mitchell.”

John and Barry stopped and looked at each other.

Barry said, “More than eighty thousand impressions? That sounds like an impressive number.”