EPISODE 53

On a spectacularly beautiful morning then, we launched Sasha’s flats boat at the public ramp at Turtle Beach and headed off into Little Sarasota Bay.  The wind on the bay can be crushing and we had a little trouble at first finding protected inlets and coves to fish. Sasha found a sandbar located in the lea of a point that blocked the prevailing wind, so we anchored the boat and walked out in the shallow water with our rods in hand.

“Look over there!” she whispered.  She pointed to the shoreline nearest us.  The sandbar dropped off between where we stood and the land, creating a small channel that was about as wide as I reckoned I could accurately cast. The tide was going out and so the water in the channel moved with it.  It reminded me of fishing for trout in the rivers back home in Vermont.  The water was very clear and while I could make out a few shapes darting about in the deeper water, I couldn’t spot what Sasha was pointing at.

“Snook, Michael!”

“Where?”

“Right up against the bank.  There must be 10 of them, at least.”

I peered at the water, but I simply couldn’t see the fish.  I’d lost snook on a couple previous trips to Fort Lauderdale in the late ‘80’s.  I’d never landed or boated one before though. Sasha did what any good guide would when faced with a dolt of a client.  She pushed me off to her left and stepped in as close as she dared to the edge of the sandbar before sending a cast at the far bank.  She got a strike on her second cast and I stepped back to watch how she worked the fish.  Snook are wonderful fighters.  They run, they jump, and in my case anyway – they always get away.  But in Sasha’s hands, this fish initially appeared to be helpless.  When the snook tore along the shoreline from right to left, Sasha turned her rod to follow while still maintaining steady pressure on the fish so that it was soon forced to double back on itself.  There wasn’t a whole lot of room in the channel where all this took place and so the fish wasn’t able to jump.  Had it done so, it would likely have ended up either stranded on the land, or on the sandbar where Sasha and I stood.  As neither seemed appealing to the snook, it finally decided on an “all-in” strategy of making one long run toward the open water of the bay.  Sasha bolted after it and I followed.  The fish was frustrated, or so it seemed.  It kept angling toward the opposite shore as it fought to resist the pull that Sasha was exerting on the line.  This meant that that it had to keep correcting its position, so as to avoid hitting the oyster beds just below the surface.  These massive clusters of small mollusks could really tear things up, anything from the hull of a flats boat to the underbelly of panicking snook.  Normally, a fish trying to escape will work itself against the sharp edges of those shells in an effort to sever the line.  But it seemed like Sasha’s fish didn’t want to run afoul of them and it gave back a little line every time it altered its course to avoid them.  She was able to gain on the snook well before it made its way to open water and finally beached it on the sandbar. While she drank in the rush of beating the snook, she looked over to me, inviting me to be part of it.

“Can you help me unhook it?” she asked.  It was obvious that she could have done so herself, but she wanted me in on the fun.  I reached down and grabbed the snook by the tail with my right hand.  It twisted and jerked about, trying to free itself.  I took my left hand, gently placed under the fish’s belly, brought it parallel to the water’s surface and it stopped moving.  Sasha reached over the snook’s jaw and carefully worked the hook loose.  We admired the fish for a few seconds before then I placed it back into the water.  It darted away quickly, clearly not all that tired from the fight.

We spent another 45 minutes running around that little sandbar.  Each of us hooked into fish, and while Sasha managed to land one more snook, I got blanked, again.  With my perfect record intact, Sasha suggested we look for some less elusive species, so that her guest might actually experience a close encounter with a fish before the day’s end.  We headed further south until we came across a place where the wind blew us parallel to the coastline.  Since it seemed a whole hell of a lot easier to let the wind push us than to fight against it, we drifted from a position about fifty yards out, down the length of the shore.

We bumped along for a while without much of anything happening.  After Sasha caught and released a large ladyfish that was in the way of another school of snook that she’d spotted near a boat mooring, we found ourselves floating close to a series of five long docks.  Both of us trained our attention on casting to them, in the hope that something might be suspended near those structures.  As we neared the second dock, I noticed a series of very bright flashes near the boat, at the upwind side.  A pod of maybe a half dozen large fish came into my view and I tossed my line into their midst.

My ¾ ounce Cleo spoon lure disappeared almost instantly into the mouth of one of the now streaking fish.  I’d like to say that I authoritatively set the hook into its jaw, but the truth was that we were heading one way and the fish was heading in the exact opposite direction.  The result is that the fish had more to do with this timely hookup than anyone or anything else.  The force of the strike was extremely violent and line quickly peeled off my reel.

“Sasha!” I shouted, but the wind was a bit too loud and she was facing away from me.  She couldn’t hear me at all.  This was of immediate concern as between my fish and the strong winds, I was rapidly running out of line. 

“Sasha!!!” I yelled, more forcefully.

“What?” she called back to me.

“I need help.  The son-of-a-bitch is spooling me!”

And so he was.  Of course, this was the first that Sasha had understood that I was even into a fish and so she walked over to see what I was hooked onto.  I made several zoo-like noises and gestured frantically with my head towards my reel.  Sasha quickly stock of the situation and somewhat misinterpreted it.  Her response was to let out the anchor.  While this indeed did stop the boat from drifting any further, it had absolutely no effect on the fish’s ability to continue to take line.  In fact, it may have actually helped the little bastard, as I swore I was able to see the knot that held my line on the spool, through the rapidly disappearing coils of monofilament.

Fortunately, Sasha was suddenly on top of things.  As quickly as the anchor had been released, it was retrieved and she fired up the engine.  She backed the boat in the direction of the running fish and we made chase.  During the frantic give and take of the fish taking line and me unsteadily gaining it back, I heard and felt a decidedly painful “POP!” in my right elbow.  I knew that sound.  I knew it well.  It was the delightful noise that a muscle makes as it tears off the bone.  Some idiot of a sports doctor gave it the name: “Tennis Elbow” many years ago, but I can promise you that I never have been much with racket sports, so that can’t be right.  But no matter what you call it, I’d just done it to myself and every time that damned fish surged, it just about pulled my forearm away from the triceps (or what passed for triceps on my body anyway).

As Sasha did her best to keep pace with the fish, the damned thing turned its body perpendicular to the boat, using the current to hold its position.  This had the effect of stalling the fight completely and establishing what could only be described as a stalemate.  There were a couple of times that I put my fingers on the line, to be sure that I hadn’t hooked bottom.  The fish didn’t appear to want to give back any of the line it’d taken and for the longest time, I believed I might not be able to handle it, being a freshly crippled angler.  But slowly, I was able to make some progress and after a good fifteen minutes, the fish began to move laterally, zigzagging off the stern.  Each time it reversed course, I was able to pull it closer.  It was going to take all of the technology the 21st century could afford our two heroes to defeat this still unseen beast.  Between my Shimano reel, the Yamaha engine, and an awful lot of shouting, the fish finally came into view.  It was a big Amber Jack, the largest one I’d ever seen.  Sasha was pretty excited too.  She grabbed a glove and a pair of pliers to help me boat and release my catch.  She took ahold of the line when the fish was alongside the boat.  She looked back at me briefly and the smile on her face was one of the most beautiful things I had ever seen in my life.  We held that for a second, just digging on what fun it all was, and that was all it took.  With a twitch that was so slight, my fish slipped off the hook.  Sasha had her pliers in position to unhook the fish, but it had already begun to make serious tracks for other waters.  She looked back at me in shock.  Why had the fishing gods been so cruel?

“Oh shit, Michael!  I’m so sorry!”

“No…fuck it!” I laughed.  “That was a great fight.”  I rubbed my elbow with my left hand and winced.  I’d really done it to myself.  Sasha noticed that I wasn’t feeling too well and she walked over to me.

“You okay?” she asked.  She looked concerned.  All of the fun of the moment was gone and for that I was sorry.  She looked at where I’d been massaging my arm.  She gently put one of her hands on it and looked at me.

“Did’ums hurt his little arm?”

“Pretty much,” I replied.

“Well,” she said with a smile, “Should I take you to the hospital?”

“No.”

“Really?”

“I think we have a sufficient quantity of beverages on board so that I can self-medicate for the time being,” I replied. 

Sasha reached into the cooler and retrieved a pair of beers for us while I made a mental note to call a physical therapist when we got back to shore.

END OF BOOK TWO

BOOK THREE COMING NEXT WEEK!

The next episode of SlipNot will be published on September 1st.

If you'd like to read SlipNot in its entirety, GO HERE.

EPISODE 52

The first day I was at Sasha’s, she had each of her technicians meet with me for about two hours, one at a time.  We covered a lot of ground: how to respond to prospects’ emails being the most critical topic. 

“The most important thing you can do with an Internet prospect,” I told them, “Is to offer information.  That’s why they contacted you to begin with.  Don’t try to sell them.  They’ll only resist.”

“But shouldn’t we at least ask them qualifying questions first?” one of them, a tech named Rachel asked me.

“Yes.  But you need to keep your part of the conversation very carefully controlled.  Keep in mind that these are apt to be the most overly educated prospects you’ve ever worked with.  Not only are they computer savvy, but they’ve also probably done a fair amount of research on pattern baldness, its causes and the various remedies that are available to them.  They know about transplants, Rogaine, and hair replacements.  What makes this even harder is that probably don’t like any of those alternatives either.  In them, you have come across the most dangerous beast in the forest: an educated consumer.”

“So how do we sell to them?” asked Eric, another of Sasha’s technicians when it was his turn to meet with me.

“You sell them by not selling to them.  That may sound like double talk, but it isn’t.  Essentially, the greatest advantage you have over the educated consumer is that while he knows what he doesn’t want, you know what actually works.”

“But,” Alicia, the third of Sasha’s tech’s had objected, “That means I’m stuck trying to sell this guy something he wants no part of.  How the hell does that work?”

“By remembering that this guy is perhaps the most qualified lead you’ve ever met.  Think about it for a minute.  In spite of all the research that he’s done, in spite of the fact that he just knows you’re going to try to strap a unit on his head or sell him some potion or lotion, in spite of all of that – he’s still talking to you, even if it’s only by email.  He hates the way he looks so much that he’s willing to run the risk of being disappointed by whatever solution you offer him.  His need to change his appearance is what you have to gauge if you’re going to get him to book an appointment with you.  His temperature at that point will be very high, so you will have to help him discover exactly how much he wants to do something, in spite of his knowledge and his suspicions.  Once he acknowledges his need, he’ll buy whatever you tell him will work.  If he tells you that no matter what, he doesn’t want to buy a hair replacement or schedule a surgery, then offer to put him on a 60-day Rogaine regimen.  The key here though is to make sure that you get a ‘before’ photograph of the top of his head before he leaves.  Then, book him 60 days out so that you can reevaluate his condition.”

The question all three of them asked about my advice on using Rogaine as a stopgap was the same: “What if nothing happens?”

“Of course it’s not going to work!” I answered.  “Rogaine is just a way of putting your prospect into a holding pattern.  The stuff is apt to slow the hair loss, over time.  But in two months, you’re probably not going to see much of any effect.  That’s when you lay it on the line for him.  He’s either got to book a surgery or buy a hair replacement system.  

“Nothing.  Else.  Works.”

And that’s when they got it.  All three, Eric, Alicia, and Rachel nodded and smiled at that point in our respective conversations.  The Internet prospect was the same as any other, except that he came in armed with more information and a few more prejudices than a normal lead.  It was their job to offer information, support, solutions, and advice – when needed.  That part of their job was the same.  All they had to do was to remember that the person in front of them, the prospect they were all trying to sell:

(a) Felt demeaned by the whole process of trying to find a solution to his hair loss

(b) Had spent hours on the Web looking for an answer

(c) Had found nothing that interested him

(d) Didn’t want to be sold anything

(e) But had come in anyway

“Once you can unearth and get your Internet prospect to recall the desperation, the pain that he felt when he decided to chuck his suspicions aside and make the call to book an appointment with you – you own him!  Given the road he’s traveled to get to you, if you can be patient, you will find that and then you can sell him.  He’ll thank you for it too.”

I looked over at the door to the small office where I’d spent the day training the techs.  It had opened and Sasha stood in the doorway, smiling.  Alicia jumped up from the chair she’d been sitting in, thanked me and hurried out.  Sasha watched her leave and then quietly closed the door behind her as she walked into the room.

“From what Rachel and Eric told me,” Sasha said as she sauntered over to the desk, her desk I might add, as all of the training sessions had been held in her office, “This whole ‘new’ process of selling Internet leads isn’t all that different from selling any of the other prospects we get.”

“True,” I replied.  “The real trick is learning how to hold back, how to not offer information unless it’s asked for.”  I had been sitting in Sasha’s chair while doing the training and as I saw she was heading for it, I stood up.

“Got it.  Now get your ass out of my chair.”

“Yes ma’am,” I replied with a grin. I looked over at Sasha and she glanced at the chair on the other side of the desk, indicating that I should sit there instead, which I did.  I am nothing, if not obedient, when I have to be.

“Michael, I think you and I need to spend a little quality time tomorrow.”

I said nothing.  At a moment like this, a smart man shuts the hell up, lest he make a complete ass of himself.  Sasha opened her calendar book up and glanced at it.

“My day tomorrow is completely clear and I suggest that you not make any plans.”

“What about training?” I asked.

“Not to worry.  We’ll pick up on that the day after tomorrow.  But that doesn’t mean you should go out late tonight.  You’re going to need to get a lot of rest.  I’ll pick you up at your hotel at 6 in the morning.”

“Where we going?” I asked.

“Fishing.  I’ll pack food and coffee.  You bring the beer.  I like Yuengling.”

“As you wish.”

The next episode of SlipNot will be published on August 25th.

If you'd like to read SlipNot in its entirety, GO HERE.

EPISODE 51

Sasha’s studio was located in the Cortez Plaza mall in Bradenton.  The original Cortez Shopping Plaza had opened in February of 1959.  Boasting 185,000 square feet of shopping space, the Cortez Plaza was actually the largest mall on the west coast of Florida at that time.  This may seem incredible given that 50 years later, the 20 largest malls in the country would each claim well over 2 million square feet of air-conditioned splendor.  Still, in the late 1950’s, this was a big deal and the Cortez Plaza was the place to be.  The anchor for the mall was the Belk-Lindsey department store.  By the time that Sasha decided to locate her studio there though, Belk-Lindsey was long gone and had been replaced by a Montgomery-Ward.  This mall appeared to have a far from certain future during the winter of 1995-’96 and during the next 10 years, it would end up being bought and sold several times.  However, when Sasha had signed her lease in ‘93, the deal she had gotten on her space was so remarkable, she couldn’t say no to it.

It was an odd place to put a hair replacement studio.  The front of the studio featured a huge window that faced right out on Tamiami Trail.  The view from inside wasn’t that spectacular, given that all you could see through the window was the parking lot and the traffic on the main road.  Most studio owners avoided large windows, as they intruded on the level of privacy that most of their clients demanded.  But Sasha was a very resourceful person and she installed honey comb shades inside the big window.  These accordion blinds blocked the ugly view of the lot, prevented pedestrians outside from peering into the studio, and still allowed almost all of the natural light to pass through inside.  It must have cost her a mint, but she did it anyway.

The attention to the natural interior light bore striking results. During the heat of the day (which to my mind begins precisely at 7:45AM in Florida and extends until the after-work cocktail hour), the rooms facing the window in the studio were so well lit by the natural light that Sasha often left the overhead fluorescent lights off.  The clients and the technicians seemed to really like this too.  There’s a theory that the reason why fluorescent light often gives people headaches or hurts their eyes is related to the blue-tinged color of the light that they produce versus the color of natural sunlight, which is decidedly of a yellow hue.  If the sun were out all the time, this issue would have never come up, but nighttime forced people to adapt.  The practice of man controlling fire to suit his purposes dates back at least 200,000 years.  Not only did fire cook his meals and keep him warm, it also gave him the ability to see a small portion of his surroundings at night.  This was useful for defensive purposes against predatory animals or hostile bands of humans.  It also meant that he could choose to walk a little further away from his domicile to take a leak after dinner.  But the color of the light from the fire was also very comforting to early man’s eyes, given that it gave off the same yellow tone as the sun.  Up until Edison’s December, 1879 demonstration of the incandescent light bulb, all of humankind’s attempts to beat back the darkness involved burning something; either wood, gas, oil, or animal fat.  But because the light bulb’s brightness came from the burning of a filament inside a vacuum, while it offered electrically generated light, even that was yellow, just like the sun.  This in part explains why after tens of thousands of years of gazing at yellow light, blue light appears unsettling to many people.  Granted, incandescent bulbs do produce some blue light, but not as much as the fluorescent kind.  This is due to the fact that minute quantities of mercury reside in the fluorescent tubes and that when they are activated by the electrical charge, they emit ultra-violet light.  Fluorescent lighting has evolved and now the more diffused waves they produce appear to be of a more orange hue than before.  But most people still don’t like fluorescent bulbs and many still claim it gives them migraines. 

Probably without even realizing it, Sasha had created an environment inside her studio that actually relaxed her clients far more than any of the new age music, aromatherapy, or piped in forest sounds that many high end spas utilized to contrive a calming ambience.  I remember visiting a remarkable spa/studio in Atlanta once where you were greeted with the cries of Japanese snow monkeys.  Upon asking the owner why he had chosen this rather bizarre soundtrack for the waiting room, he responded, “They have the most remarkable sex drive, you know.”

No, I didn’t.

But “Sasha’s” was really quite unpretentious.  The design on the glass front door located to the right of the window was almost Spartan.  It only showed her logo, which was her name, written in script and the telephone number of the studio.  Below that was the simple message: “By appointment only.”  There was no mention of what kind of business was inside.  In fact, every so often a carful of tourists would come in, wondering if it was a restaurant.  The receptionist in the foyer would assure them that it was not and then offer a few recommendations of appropriate dining facilities nearby that Sasha had personally selected.  The visitors left without ever knowing what kind of business had been going on behind the reception area.

The waiting room was quite small and that was because clients rarely had to deposit themselves there for more than a few minutes.  Sasha purposely worked short breaks to be scheduled between client appointments.  This served three purposes.  First, if a technician was running a bit behind, it offered a buffer that would allow for the tech to finish up before the next appointment was set to start.  Second, in the event that everything was running smoothly, the technician had time to straighten things out at his or her station and even to take a quick break to grab some coffee or hit the bathroom.  Third, it provided an incentive for technicians to work efficiently, so as to earn that short break between clients.  This may have seemed odd thinking on Sasha’s part, given that technicians obviously made more money based on the number of clients that the studio could service each day.  However, Sasha felt strongly that since she paid a very competitive wage that the inducement of free time would be a motivator.  She was right too.  Her techs worked efficiently and they all seemed to be very happy.

You left the waiting room via a door on the left wall and that led to a hallway.  There were three doors on the left hand side of the hall and another three on the opposite wall.  The doors on the right held the stockroom, the repair room, and Sasha’s private office.  The three doors on the left opened up into the consultation rooms.  Sasha had constructed walls that ran right up to the huge exterior window so that even though each room was private, they were all lit by the sunlight that filtered through those honeycomb shades.  At the far end of the hallway was another door that led out of the building.  In this way, technicians could quickly sneak a peak down the hall after finishing with a client to let them out discretely.  As I mentioned, privacy was something that Sasha really valued and the design of her studio was a major reason for her success.

The next episode of SlipNot will be published on August 19th.

If you'd like to read SlipNot in its entirety, GO HERE.

EPISODE 50

Sasha paused.  She was breathing heavily.  She collected herself and blurted out, “What the hell am I supposed to do with these leads anyway?”

I didn’t say anything for a few seconds.  Sasha was frustrated, but her last question indicated that she finally felt as though she was missing something.  I decided to let her stew in her doubt for a bit and then see what would happen.  In turn, Sasha didn’t speak either, as she was waiting for me to respond.  Silence is a great tool in a conversation, one that I usually had absolutely no aptitude for applying properly, given my overly verbose nature.  Still, I sat motionless at my desk, listening to Sasha’s breathing, hoping that I hadn’t overplayed this.  But I had very little reason to fear because the tension that the silence had built had really gotten to Sasha.  Finally, she spoke, very quietly, almost in a timid voice.

“Michael?  Are you still there?”

“Yup.”

“Jesus.”

I stayed quiet.  Sasha was still breathing heavily, but she was calming down.

“Michael?”

“Yes?”

“I can’t believe I just did that.  I mean, it was so unprofessional.”

“It’s okay, you were frustrated.”

“Yeah, but I had no right to lash out at you.  I was just wrong.”

“It’s okay,” I replied.

Sasha took a deep breath and in a very small voice, she said, “I’m sorry.  I’m so embarrassed.”

“It’s fine, Sasha.  This is new for all of us.”

“Does that mean that you don’t know how this works either?” she asked with a nervous laugh.

“Actually, no.  Bosco, Pierre and I spent quite a lot of time working the prospects that came from the site, right after it went live.  So we’ve found a bunch of different ways of taking their temperature and to get them to tell us what they want us to do for them.”

“Like?”

“When you called the leads that left phone numbers, what did you ask them?”

“I asked them how long they’d been losing their hair.”

“And what was the reaction?”

“Michael, they got pissed!  Really pissed!  A couple of them told me to go fuck myself and almost all the others just hung up.”

“Understandable,” I said.  I knew that this would drive Sash nuts and I didn’t have to wait long before she did so.

“What the hell do you mean, ‘Understandable’?”

“Well, think about it.  These folks were on a Web site that offered to help them with their problem.  They left their contact info and then waited for someone to call them back.  They want to know what their options are.  They don’t want to be sold.  Your first response though was to sell them.”

“All I did was ask them how long they’d been going bald!”

“Correct.  What they wanted to hear most from you was…HOW CAN I HELP YOU?”

“But if I don’t ask qualifying questions, how do I go about figuring out what to do with them?”

“Sasha, you’re too good at this to make that mistake.  Do you really learn anything helpful from your prospect by asking them how long they’ve been going bald, how much hair they’ve lost, where it’s fallen out…any of that?  I know you can get a bit of a mental picture of who your prospect is, but it really doesn’t matter.  You can’t do a damn thing for him unless you can get him to come in.”

“But you can’t just say, ‘Come on in baby, I can make it all okay.’”

I laughed.  So did Sasha.  It was clear that she was digging this and that was a good thing.  Now I had to build on it.

“Sasha, do you know much about fishing?”

“I own a ’92 Proguide Flats Boat with Yamaha 150.  I take it out in Little Sarasota Bay all the time for snook!”

“Cool!  Now, I’ve never caught a snook.  What do you usually use on them?”

“Either a one eighth or a quarter ounce jig with a 3-inch yellow Berkley Gulp grub, why?”

I had her now!  “So, you wouldn’t suggest using a topwater lure or buzzbait?”

“I don’t know.  You might.  But the jig seems to be the most productive way of getting them to strike.”

“So what you’re saying is that if the jig didn’t work, you’d try something else, right?”

“I see where this is going, Michael.  Just because I know how to work a prospect in over the phone doesn’t mean that I can use the same strategy on these email leads you’ve been sending me.”

“Exactly!  Most of them didn’t even expect you to call them, even if they decided to leave a number.  They made their initial contact on the Web and so they assumed that any response will come from there.”

“So,” she said slowly, “Does this mean that you and Bosco are going to charge me for lessons on how to do this?”

“Probably.”

She laughed good and hard this time.  “You guys are too much!  I pay all of this money out to you and your response is that I need to spend more?”

“Sasha, you don’t know how to do this.  Shit, most people don’t.  But we do.  We’ve given you some great leads and a way to keep getting them, but it’s all useless unless you figure out how to approach them properly.”

“I get it, Michael.  I really do.  Do me a favor though, will you?”

“Sure.”

“Tell Bosco I want to talk with him.”

“You want me to transfer you?”

“If he’s around, yes.”

Bosco and Sasha spoke for quite a while, a good 40 minutes in fact.  At first I was a little nervous, given that I’d brazenly told the nice lady that the solution to all of the troubles in the world was to write yet another check to Bosco.  But as it was clear that given that they were both still talking, at least it meant that they might just be doing some business. This would hopefully outweigh any error on my party.  I spent the time fooling around on the Web, visiting the Time On-Line Politics site, where I laid out the recent doings at GW’s Republican Rumpus Room.

“Sounds like you screwed the pooch, Mike!” GW merrily posted in response. 

“You might be able to salvage your job,” Guy Montag offered.  “If your boss can save the account, you’ll get off with a warning.  But you better learn to keep your mouth in check in the future, buddy!  Good luck!”

With those hopeful thoughts to hold onto, I waited for Bosco to finish talking to Sasha.  When I saw the light on Bosco’s extension go off, I mentally began to count off what I estimated were seconds before he summoned me on the intercom.  I got to 6.

“That was a real interesting play you made back there,” Bosco said as soon as I’d sat down in the chair across from his desk.  As I’d decided to heed the advice that Guy had given me, I said nothing.  I figured that my big mouth had gotten me into this mess and so I sure as hell couldn’t count on it to get me out of it.

“You realize that Sasha is a major player in this business, don’t you?  The Sarasota market is the one of the 20 largest in the country.  It’s combined with Tampa/St. Pete, so this is big.”

I remained silent, contemplating my future as one of the latest additions to the Vermont Department of Labor’s unemployment rolls.  Bosco waited for me to speak and when I declined, he shrugged.

“Sasha told me that you said that the best way for her to learn how to work the leads is to pay us to teach her.  That right?”

“Yes, Bosco.”

“Well, you know what?  That’s exactly what we’re going to do!”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.  That was what I wanted all along.”

“Any particular reason why you didn’t tell me that?”

“I wanted to see how you handled yourself.”

“What if I’d fucked it up?”

Bosco smiled.  He started to speak, but he laughed instead.  In fact, he couldn’t stop laughing for about 10 seconds before he was able to go on.

“Michael, when I saw you listening to Sasha chew you out like that without opening your mouth even once, I realized that you’d finally become one of the most dangerous and yet also most valuable people I’d ever met.  You’ve trained yourself to be an exceptional salesman.  You countered a massive objection by doing nothing when nothing was all you had to offer.  It required a lot of discipline on your part and I respect that.  I hesitate to tell you this though.”

“Why?  I mean, thanks…but why is this a problem?”

Bosco got serious now.  He leaned toward me and he spoke in a low voice.

“Because now you know how good you are.  For a guy with an ego like yours, that’s a curse.  But you’ll get paid back on this, just not by me.”

“Why?  What do you mean, Bosco?”

“Because you’re going to go to Sarasota the week after next, Michael.  Sasha wants you to go down there for a few days to teach her and her technicians how to work these leads.”

“What?”

“I’m not kidding. Sasha also told me to tell you to pack a couple of fishing rods.”

“Cool!”

“By the way, Michael?  There’s one thing I didn’t quite get.”

“Yes?”

“What the fuck is a ‘buzzbait’ and why did she tell me to make sure you left it at home?”

The next episode of SlipNot will be published on August 11th.

If you'd like to read SlipNot in its entirety, GO HERE.