“But you gon’ do good at this promotions thing,” Thomas continued as they reached the table and sat back down. “You mark my words.”

IVAN EVENTUALLY worked out a deal with Carol and her business-savvy daughter Ida to charge a five-dollar “donation” that he would share with them after the party. He didn’t have the ice in his veins to ask for a full cover charge yet. And just in case his first event was a dud, he wanted to make sure he still had something to offer them for their efforts.

The total expense of the party, including promotional flyers, email blasts, and website updates, was close to eight hundred dollars. Two days before his first big Thursday event, Ivan sat alone at home inspecting the artwork of his first promotional flier. He was very pleased with it.

The flyer mimicked the initial idea that Paul had come up with in his mock-up drawing. On the back of the flier, Ivan allowed them to promote their plan to pull in a broader San Diego email list through the website. So Paul and Jeff enlarged the IDPromotions.com brand across the back, with “Who are you?” slanting across the top left corner, “What do you do?” slanting across the top right, and “Let us know!” across the bottom.

Ivan had to admit that it was a clever idea. They had street teams passing out fliers all over the city. Once they attracted high traffic to the website, they had all the right questions set up to collect the needed data.

The biggest decision was whether or not Ivan wanted to promote himself on the site. But he decided not to. He wanted to get his promotion business off the ground first. He forced himself to rationalize that it wasn’t about him yet; it was all about the promotions idea.

As soon as Ivan set his flyer back in the pile of a hundred or so that sat out on the coffee table in front of him, Catherine Boone called him on his cell phone. She had gotten the job in Oceanside and was moving back to San Diego that same week. She was extra excited about it.

“Isn’t this perfect timing, Ivan? I fly into San Diego on the same day that you kick off your first party,” she told him.

Ivan wasn’t as excited. Just as Thomas had told him, Carol’s daughter Ida was a good-looking match, and he looked forward to working with her. However, if Catherine showed up, with her familiarity with him, along with her control issues, he figured she would get in the way of his plans to charm Ida.

“Does your flight get in early enough for that?” he asked Catherine. He hoped that it didn’t. Or at least that she would cut it close. That would leave him no time to worry about her.