by Dave Jackson
“Sí. It’s named after the Native Americans who used to live around here.”
“Oh yeah. Thanks.” Greg turned and wandered out of the front door in a daze. Sure enough, on the fence by the street a much larger sign read, “Pottawattomie Park, Chicago Park District.” The spelling was slightly different than Potawatomi Watercraft, but . . . Greg’s head spun. The coincidence seemed too powerful to ignore.
If he’d happened by this park before receiving the email this morning, he would’ve taken it as a sure sign that God was giving him the job, but what was the point now?
He headed slowly for home, trying to make sense of it.
Could he have read the email incorrectly? Should he call Roger back to see if they’d had a change of mind, force Roger to speak to him directly? Maybe he ought to take the initiative and offer to work for them for lower pay. He could negotiate. Maybe work on straight commission. That wouldn’t strain their budget, but it wouldn’t compensate him for all he’d be contributing either. He was a promoter, an event organizer, not just a salesman.
“There you are.” Nicole looked relieved when he came in the house. “We couldn’t find you, so I went ahead and made some tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch. Is that okay for you?”
“Sure.” He checked his watch—twenty past twelve. He had no idea he’d been out so long. “We got any sour cream to put in the soup?”
“Sorry, all out. Where’ve you been, anyway?”
“Uh . . . I just went for a walk.” He probably ought to tell Nicole. He ought to admit how he was feeling. This seemed like a crisis, and they ought to be praying together, but . . . “Hey Nikki, you ever take the kids over to Pottawattomie Park?”
“Sometimes. We’ve been over there a time or two, but not yet this year. Kids seem to like that wooden playground with the frontier theme at Indian Boundary better. But Pottawattomie has more organized recreation. I’ll probably sign them up for one of their sports programs when they get a little older.”
“Yeah. Walked by there today. Looked pretty nice.” He’d been ready to suggest praying, but somehow he couldn’t steer the small talk around to asking . . . or even to telling her about the devastating email. “Uh, Nicole, would you mind if I put this food on a tray and took it to my desk? I . . . I gotta do some things.”
She gave him a strange look but shrugged. “Sure.”
Seated at his desk a few moments later, Greg woke up his computer and reread Roger’s email. He hadn’t misread it. It said exactly what he remembered with the same disappointing conclusion. No job from Potawatomi Watercraft.
An annoying pop-up ad filled a third of Greg’s screen. He clicked the X in the corner to dismiss it. Thirty seconds later, the same ad returned. He was about to dismiss it again when the headline caught his attention: “Earn twice your current salary while working from home.”
Huh. Greg didn’t want to work from home, and it wouldn’t take much to earn more than he was making at the moment, but he clicked on the ad and was taken to a classy-looking website for “SlowBurn, the Time-Release Energy Drink that won’t let you down!” A video began, showing a parade of attractive young people advancing down a city street toward the camera, each drinking a can of something and then tossing the empty can into a recycle bin. “Cash in today on the fastest-growing segment of the soft drink market, and pocket your share of this nine-billion-dollar industry! Yes, you can earn fifty, seventy, a hundred-and-twenty thousand dollars a year or more and be your own boss while doing so.”
Be your own boss . . .
It was that last phrase that kept Greg engaged. After the betrayal by Chuck Hastings for allowing Powersports Expos to collapse and the recent runaround from Roger Wilmington at Potawatomi, he wasn’t much inclined to work for another boss. Why not work for himself—especially if there was that much money in it?
When the video was over, he read on, intrigued by SlowBurn’s interest in sports. The company had already sponsored several marathon and triathlon champions. Leaning back in his chair, Greg rubbed his chin thoughtfully. If they were really going after the sport market, perhaps he would have something to offer.
When Greg clicked on “Build for the future with a breakout franchise,” he was asked to type in his name—just his first name, “no obligation.” He did so, and the next page describing SlowBurn’s pay structure was personalized.
Greg, you can get paid in four ways:
1. Direct profit. As a SlowBurn rep, you can purchase this amazing product at an incredibly low wholesale price and sell it at whatever markup your market can sustain. It’s up to you, the business owner—50 percent, 100 percent or more. Some representatives are able to move substantial quantities with a 200 percent markup. Imagine getting back three dollars for every dollar you invest!
2. Team royalties. By recruiting a team of other reps to work under you, Greg, you can get a percentage of every sale they make. If each of them recruits teams under them, you would get a percentage of their sales as well. And you could build as many tiers as you choose. Unfortunately, there is a cap of $58,000 per week on this compensation. But it is the only pay feature of the program that is capped.
Greg’s head jerked back, incredulous. If they had to put a cap on this feature, there must be some people who earned that much! He was a competitor and knew he’d soon be a contestant among the upper echelons, but even if he never reached $58,000 per week, just imagine what he could do with even half that much. A quick calculation in his head rang up a million and a half per year, just in team royalties.
And there was more.
3. Instant bonuses. The larger the wholesale quantities your team members purchase, Greg, the lower their price. And you’ll be credited with instant bonuses for each order. These bonuses are available down through five team tiers below you. Your wealth and lifestyle is up to you, not the whim of some boss.
4. Training premiums. SlowBurn is interested in training its representatives and promoting you up the leadership ladder. For every level completed at one of our quarterly training conferences—held regionally—you will be eligible for an array of premiums.
The website pictured people enjoying a cruise, a yacht, even a Mercedes SLS sports car. “All of this,” the webpage noted, “is possible from a business you own and can run from your home, on your terms.”
Greg pushed his chair back from the desk. These people weren’t talking about chump change. He could hardly imagine how his lifestyle would change. A hundred or two hundred thousand a month? What would they do? Where would they live? The possibilities were endless. Wow!
If this were possible, it represented the kind of prosperity Pastor Hanson had been preaching about. Pastor Hanson hadn’t been talking about scrimping day to day the way most people lived. He’d been urging his flock to cash in on God’s unfathomable wealth, telling them they were kings and the children of the King, so why not live like it?
This just might be the way to do it.
But what exactly would he be selling? Could he get behind the product? It had always been important to him to believe in what he was doing. Was SlowBurn really better than all the other energy drinks people bought at the supermarket?
Greg could hear the kids’ chatter in the kitchen as they finished their lunch in the breakfast nook. Nicole . . . What would she think about going into business for himself and working from home? Would she just feel like he was underfoot?
He skimmed over the information on the computer screen again. If he did as well as the website testimonial, he could rent an office. Or buy a bigger house with office space. They could even get something grander than the McMansion at the end of the block.
Ha! That would be a sweet role reversal after how presumptuously that guy had behaved toward “Nikki.”
Chapter 14
Greg noticed his lunch, still untouched. Absently taking a few bites of the cold toasted cheese, he continued to scroll through the web pages. He knew most energy drinks simply delivered a jolt of caffei
ne sufficient to make the user feel a surge of energy. But on every page, SlowBurn claimed to be something different. “A product you can sell without apology! A product like no other!”
Ah! A link to the ingredients. He clicked. Now he’d discover the disappointing truth that the whole scheme was nothing more than smoke and mirrors, a product he could duplicate with cans of several brands available at the local 7-Eleven.
A page popped up with a white box at the top listing all the ingredients, similar to what one would find on the side of a cake mix. He scanned through the list, and there it was: caffeine. But it was the next to last ingredient, certainly not the predominant item. SlowBurn contained triple-filtered carbonated spring water, electrolytes, stevia, quinoa, Ganoderma mushrooms, citric acid, natural flavors, taurine, sodium citrate, caffeine, color added.
Below this list, SlowBurn boldly described the ingredients that set it apart from all other energy drinks: quinoa and Ganoderma mushrooms.
Greg made a wry face as he stared at his computer. He’d eaten quinoa. It tasted good enough, but SlowBurn called it a superfood, far more than merely a nutritious substitute for rice, which was how Greg had eaten it. They claimed the extract they distilled from quinoa enhanced the body’s ability to absorb oxygen.
Greg stopped. Could that be true?
He opened another window in his browser and searched the web for “quinoa” and “oxygen.” A couple of hits would have sent him back to SlowBurn, but then he found an article that pointed out that quinoa had been cultivated for thousand of years by Native Indians in the Andes of Peru and Bolivia at altitudes between ten- and twenty-thousand feet elevation. The article suggested it was the quinoa that allowed these hardy people to thrive at those altitudes by increasing the body’s ability to absorb oxygen. In addition to extending physical endurance, more oxygen to the brain meant heightened alertness. All this made sense to Greg, even though the article didn’t include scientific research in support of the theory.
SlowBurn’s other special ingredient was an extract from the Ganoderma mushrooms, “an herb used in traditional Asian medicines to purge the body of pollutants.” The product description claimed it had an anticancer, antibacterial, antiviral, antifungal effect, able to reduce cholesterol and protect the liver.
Wow! Either this was nothing more than snake oil or SlowBurn was really onto something. Greg was fascinated. He looked up the strange mushroom online and found much the same description SlowBurn gave it.
Every information page was accompanied by a popup box saying: “Click here to build your future, Greg, with a breakout franchise,” and “Greg, the timing couldn’t be better for your SlowBurn start. Click here.” “When was the last time you were paid every time someone drank a soft drink? Click here, Greg, and start your income flowing.”
Finally he clicked, and he wasn’t surprised when he had to fill out his full name, address, phone number, and email address.
“You will be contacted shortly,” was the only response on his screen when he completed the form.
Okay. He needed a stretch. Greg got up and paced around the living room to clear his head. This couldn’t really be happening. He’d probably just been suckered into being added to a bunch of promotion lists that would feed him spam for weeks to come. He headed for the kitchen to make some coffee.
The coffeemaker had barely begun to gurgle when his cell phone rang. It was a Chicago exchange, but he didn’t recognize the caller ID. “Hello.”
“Greg Singer? This is Arlo Fulbright. I’m the Chicago area director for SlowBurn. Do I understand correctly that you recently indicated your interest in becoming a SlowBurn representative?”
Greg stood in the middle of the kitchen as the smell of fresh coffee filled the kitchen. “Yes, yeah. I’m Greg Singer. You caught me by surprise. I didn’t expect such a quick response.” For that matter, he hadn’t expected any kind of a personal response. “How’d you get my num—oh, right, I filled it in, didn’t I?”
“You sure did, which tells me you’re serious about this. And we want to demonstrate our enthusiasm for anyone who is a viable SlowBurn representative. Now, because you responded online, you were referred to me as the director for the Chicago area. But if you join us, you’ll be able to recruit team members who’ll report directly to you. Only you would report to me. So tell me a little about yourself, Greg, and why you’re interested in SlowBurn.”
Greg glanced at the coffee. The carafe was only half full, so he drifted back into the living room, phone to his ear. Too excited to sit at his desk, he walked around the room telling Arlo about the position he’d held with Powersports Expos. Arlo asked all the right questions to allow him to highlight his achievements without seeming to brag.
“Well, I can certainly say that you’re the kind of person who would be well suited for SlowBurn. So are you wanting to do this on the side, or are you looking to make a career change?”
Greg hesitated. “Well, to be completely upfront with you, Powersports is folding. So I’m looking for a new job. There aren’t many options in my field in the Chicago area, but we don’t want to move. So . . .”
“So you’re checking us out. That’s great, because I think you’ll like what you find. Greg, I see that you live up on the Northside. I’m pretty tied up for the next couple of days, but any chance you’d have time Friday afternoon to come down to Hyde Park, where I’m located? I’d like us to meet face to face, make sure the chemistry is right. And of course, you need to sample SlowBurn and see how we’re set up. Usually product is shipped from our Pennsylvania headquarters direct to the U.S. reps, but I’ve got a small regional warehouse here with the various packages. Sometimes there’s a run on product and a rep can’t wait for overnight delivery. Think you could make it?”
Greg hesitated only a moment. Free on Friday? He was free right now! But he said, “Sure, I could do that. Friday at . . .?”
“Three o’clock good for you?” Arlo gave his address, and the call was over.
Greg took a deep breath. Could this really be the answer to his prayers?
“Nicole? Nicole!” he called from the top of the basement stairs.
His wife came to the bottom of the steps and looked up at him.
“Good news, honey. I’ve got a job lead down in Hyde Park. Got an interview Friday afternoon. I’m gonna take the Cherokee. That’s not your shopping day, is it?”
“No.” A smile warmed her face. “That’s great, Greg. I knew the Lord would provide.”
Greg grinned. “Yeah, well, you have no idea how huge this might be. But I want to check it out in person before I get too excited about it. Think I’ll go for a run, work off some of the tension I’ve been under.”
“Good idea.” Nicole gave him one of her sunshine smiles. She really was a gorgeous woman. And, though he hardly dared mention it, he thought she might’ve lost a few of those extra pounds lately.
Changing into his running clothes, he felt lightheaded. If he was his own boss, he might be able to get back to running like he used to do. And a job like this might fix all the tension that’d been building between him and Nicole for the last few weeks. Probably his fault mostly. Even before Powersports let him go, he’d been uptight. And since then he’d worried far more than he’d acknowledged. When he got this job pinned down, he’d make it up to her.
Good heavens, he’d be able to do more than make it up. He’d turn her into a queen. They’d be moving on up.
* * * *
Greg had no sooner left for his interview on Friday than Nicole dismissed “school” early. The kids had worked hard all week and completed all the assignments she had planned for them. Should she have prepared more? No. It’d been more than enough. She might be tired, but the kids were doing great. She told Becky and Nathan to run outside and play while she cleaned up the basement classroom and turned off the computer and lights.
When she got upstairs thirty minutes later, Nicole went out on the porch to check on them. They were fine, racing their bikes
up the sidewalk on the other side of the street. “No riding in the street!” she called. “Sidewalk only!”
Nate waved one hand in the air while he concentrated on going even faster to stay ahead of Becky. This dead-end block of Beecham Street was fairly safe as far as traffic was concerned, seldom any cars other than those that belonged to neighbors. But occasionally a car drove too fast, like right now!
A black limo accelerated down the street from Lincoln Paddock’s place. The rear sunroof was open, and just as it passed, two women stood up through the opening and yelled something. One was dressed in a well-filled halter-top and waved at Nicole like she was riding in a speedboat. The other was untangling a pink boa wrapped around her neck. They certainly seemed to be celebrating something.
Nicole had often seen people coming and going from the big house at the end of the street and had accepted the rumor that Paddock threw wild parties. In the past, she’d never cared. But today . . .
She watched the limo brake at the end of the block and turn west. Was Lincoln inside with those girls? Couldn’t tell from the tinted windows. Seemed a little early in the afternoon to be partying. The Lincoln Paddock she’d come to know didn’t seem like a playboy. He was certainly good looking—knock-’em-dead handsome, in fact. But he’d always acted like a gentleman, casual but refined.
Shaking her head, she turned back inside. The situation bothered her. But why? Good grief, Nicole. If the man wanted to throw parties, that was his business. She shouldn’t care. No, she was only concerned about the safety of their street.
Still . . . what were those girls doing at his place? Were they friends of his? He’d seemed to enjoy having someone to talk to—like they’d done at the zoo—but if that was the case, why hadn’t he just come down to her house? They could’ve sat on the porch and had a glass of iced tea. Or if that felt awkward to him, he could’ve invited her to come up to his place.
