“Let me think about that a little while longer, Eddie,” he told his sales manager. He was on his way to meet with the luxury car dealer in La Jolla, one of the wealthiest areas of San Diego.

“Well, what do you want me to tell them in the meantime?” Eddie asked him. He couldn’t believe that Ivan would balk at an instant six-figure deal.

Ivan said, “Tell him that we’re investigating the space availability on the site right now.”

Eddie paused. He said, “Ivan, he’s already talked to me about the new pages we’ve put up since your birthday network party. He also told me that you had some hesitancy about his idea when he spoke to you personally about it. Now, I want to remind you, Ivan, that this is a heavy military area, and we definitely don’t want the word to get out that we have some kind of bias against the U.S. military. That is definitely not the kind of press that we need right now, nor at any time in our business future, especially while you’re still based here in San Diego.”

Ivan heard all of that and thought, Shit! Eddie was right, of course. However, Ivan hated the feeling of being pushed into a corner. Fuck these military guys! he wanted to shout. But he knew better than to voice it. Businessmen had to do things they didn’t like sometimes.

“All right, well…” He was still hard-pressed to say it. Finally, he said, “Do what you need to do, Eddie. I’ll talk to you about it later. I have a two o’clocker with this car dealership.”

Eddie chuckled and said, “It’s about time you upgraded that car of yours. Give that Altima away as a bonus to one of the interns on staff or something.”

Ivan told him, “I’m not going to buy a car. I’m headed over there to talk about doing a promotional car show.”

Eddie laughed again. He said, “You are one serious business machine, Ivan. I guess your accounting job was holding you back more than I imagined.”

“Definitely,” Ivan told him. “The sky is the limit now. So I’m going right after it.” He felt he had all the time in the world without his office job. John and Barry agreed to his marketing and consultant position with a few changes. They would allow a three-hundred-thousand-dollar deal instead of four hundred and change, and Ivan had to include the creation and promotion of at least two major networking events for the company each year. They also agreed that Mike Adams could join him as his personal accountant and tax advisor after the busy month of April.