THINGS WERE MOVING and shaking at lightning speed in the new year. Ivan had already made another fifty thousand dollars by the end of January: a split of seven thousand each week from NFL playoff parties at Raymond’s, another seven thousand split each week from a combination of small cow parties downtown and around San Diego, and a more than twenty-thousand-dollar net from website advertisement.

The website ad team had reached nearly forty ads a month, with five page sponsors on board, including Hutch & Mitchell Accounting and Pacific Property Realtors for the “Financial Corner” and the “San Diego Real Estate” pages, respectively. With the additional web pages, their ad capacity and viewer impressions continued to grow.

“Now we can make close to a hundred thousand a month off the ads before we even increase our rates again,” Ivan told himself while going over the numbers at his apartment. He used his second bedroom as a home office, with a large desk, a leather office chair, two meeting chairs, a large LCD screen for his computer, a color laser printer, a multipurpose fax and copy machine, and a separate phone line. He had begun the process of remodeling and painting the three foreclosure properties he had bought close to San Diego State’s campus. They were on schedule to open up the home office for business by the second week of February.

Ivan leaned back in his downtown apartment office chair and propped his feet up on the desk like a big boss. He told himself out loud, “I’m turning twenty-nine this year. I’m not even thirty yet. And I’m making out like a bandit now.”

Then he checked his watch to make sure he was still on time for the party he promised to stop by and make an appearance at downtown.

It was only nine thirty, right on schedule.

“I need to buy an upgraded watch, too,” he reminded himself.

As soon as he stood up to get himself ready for the party, his cell phone rang from his hip. He looked down and read the number. It was Julio, his old neighbor.

Ivan answered his call. “Hey, Julio. What’s going on, man?”

Julio said, “I got great news for you, Ivan. You know I’ve been telling my cousin about you, right? So I told him to check out your website. And when he finally got around to looking at it, he says he loves it now, man. So he told some of the guys to check it out, and now Busta Rhymes, Eve, and Xzibit all want to come down to San Diego and do a couple parties or whatever with you. He told me even DJ Quik checked out your website.”

Ivan said, “Oh, yeah? So again, man, what’s their price tags for a basic party appearance? Because I’m not paying thirty to fifty thousand dollars just for them to show up,” he repeated.