She was pissed. But Ivan failed to see the problem. The parties were all easy, everyone was working regularly, and everyone was being paid. Ivan was even tempted to laugh out loud at her tantrum. It just didn’t make any sense to him.

He said, “Lucina, if you need more than thirty, forty thousand easy dollars a month right now to satisfy you and your girls, then I have no idea what you’re all spending it on. The Fashion Valley Mall? Because that’s good money in my book. Maybe you need to hire me as your accountant, too,” he quipped.

Lucina told him, “That may be good money for you, but my goal is to make much more than that. And now that football season is over, half of the money will be replaced by, what, two more small cow parties?”

She continued, “My girls and I have had enough of this. That is why I wanted you to meet with old friends and new investors tonight to move us closer to doing much bigger concerts. Now, what did Jeffrey talk to you about?” she asked him again.

As Ivan listened to her rant, the picture became clearer for him. Lucina and her girls had obviously been around a lot more hard cash than he had. Nevertheless, they had not learned how to build on it, so they had unrealistic ideas of how real wealth was accumulated.

Just to make sure his theory was right, Ivan asked his partner, “So, you asked Jeffrey and some of the other people in there to invest in another party with us?”

Lucina said, “Not just a party, Ivan, but huge parties. We need to get them excited about making big money,” she told him.

Ivan looked away toward the window and shook his head. Lucina hadn’t learned enough about how the rich liked to operate. As an accountant at a well-respected California firm, Ivan figured he knew a lot more on the subject.

He told her, “Lucina, those people are not thinking about investing in parties. And you can’t get their money by asking them for it. I don’t care what you explain to them. Rich people invest only in what they understand. So you have to talk to them in their language. And they really don’t care about you telling them about it, they want to see it.”

He said, “So the best way to attract investors is by continuing to make your own money first. You flip forty thousand a month into eighty thousand. You flip eighty thousand a month into one-sixty. You flip one-sixty into three-twenty. And you keep it going. Then, before you know it, they’ll start calling you up. That’s how it works. But you can’t sit around talking to them about it,” he explained to her. “You gotta show them the hard numbers.

“But we’re just getting started here, Lucina. Give it some time.”