WHEN IVAN’S CELL PHONE rang at his apartment, he had already made his way into his bedroom office to start jotting down all of his ideas: “Who is Ivan David? What is an I.D. Promotion? Where is the big party?” Then he wrote down a list of people to invite: advertisers, liquor sponsors, corporations, Chargers, Padres, military personnel, promoter affiliates, all of Lucina’s girls, the Urban League members. He followed this with a list of things to arrange for: radio promotion, ticket access, gift bags, magazine articles, newspaper articles, website promotion, flyers…

Ivan looked up when his phone rang and smiled. She’s calling me back already, he thought. It had only been ten minutes.

He answered the phone and asked Lucina, “So, what do you think about my party idea now?” He was still grinning. He figured she had thought about it more.

“How do you plan to make it all work?” she asked him. “If I know you, you have your own ideas already. So I will tell you which plans will work and which plans will not.”

Ivan said, “First we have to use tickets, and we can give some away with a big radio promotion. And I definitely want to get the liquor sponsors involved with this one. Of course, I’ll hit up our friends at the Chargers and Padres to come out. I’ll get all of the Urban League members to come. I’m going to do that 944 magazine article. Eddie K. will link me up with his editorial contacts at the San Diego Union Tribune for an arts and lifestyle article. We’ll also hit up the smaller papers in town. Then we’ll give away gift bags to the first five hundred people at the party. And I’ll tap into all of my website advertisers to convince them to contribute as sponsors or add something of value to the gift bags. Then we hit up all of our promoter friends to join us in the fun. They all owe us now, right?”

Lucina heard him out and responded, “You make it all sound too simple. And you can do all of those things, Ivan, but what are you really giving to the customer for their fifty dollars?”

Ivan explained, “Lucina, the one thing Americans love more than anything is a success story. That’s why we have so many of these reality shows popping up nowadays. Americans love to see new faces in the limelight. So we’re gonna give them one. ‘The Ivan David story.’”

“You haven’t done anything yet,” Lucina told him. The audacity of this man!

“Nor have these reality show people,” Ivan argued.

“Ivan, they’re on national television. We get to watch them make fools of themselves for free. They’re not asking us for fifty dollars to come to a party.”