Imagine my surprise when one day I was browsing the stacks at a LAPL and found a book that had been written by an ex friend of mine and learned she was publicly speaking to other women on how to follow in her footsteps and grow their own businesses. She traveled afar to inspire and encourage. She sold this book at seminars.
That this book was on the shelf of even one LAPL meant that someone in her family had prevailed with a librarian downtown. You didn't just send books out to branches and expect them to get on shelves. Downtown had to approve.
I had trusted this woman and her partner. I had become a friend of her family. I was well aware of their prosperity. Her parents were world travelers. Their living room was the size of some people's houses. Their sofa cost as much as a car. When someone had a birthday they went to a five star restaurant and booked a private dining room.
They'd paid out thousands in college tuition. And in front of me they said they wanted to buy her a condo as part of her eventual inheritance and to save her from throwing money away on rent. Someday she would inherit millions.
She went out to eat most nights because she never learned to cook. When the doggy bags in the fridge started to mold her mom sent over her maid.
Her parents had earned a fortune honestly coming from humble beginnings. But her dad didn't want to invest in what he considered to be an unworkable business idea-hers. She had emotionally blackmailed him/them for not giving her start up capital. She cut them off and I was expected to support that effort by shunning the invitations that kept coming. I complied.
She, her partner, and her partner's parents had then pulled what we used to call "a rash of shit" on me.
I checked out the book.
There are books that you savor, a plate of wine and cheese aside. Then there are books that, if you're a drinker, drive you to it. Too bad I barely drink.
I cracked open the book and almost immediately read between the lies.
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I had met characters like this before in business. They so greatly exaggerated their youthful hardship and hard work to improve their improbable rags to riches story.
One multimillionaire I met at an event spun the web that he had started in Philadelphia selling pencils from a tin cup while riding around on a bicycle.
Hey. I'll tell you why I'm not rich. One year I was expected to sell chocolate mint candy, the next light bulbs, in order to remain in good standing at my high school. Then I sold yearbook patronages door to door.
Another man I worked with would put on a sad smile for himself and tell how he grew up living over a chicken shack. The way he described it, you could hear clucking and see feathers flying around in the air. People would wait till he left and then another man would shake his head no and say, "I grew up near him and there were no chickens. He was middle class."
But those men, who believed their own PR, hadn't been using their fiction to sell empowerment workshops.
My ex-friend had been unfairly fired from a job by a woman who fired a series of women because they were too smart and she feared they'd steal her business just as she had stolen the business from her employer.
Out of work, she started attending seminars on how to buy and turn over real estate and considered walking the hot coals to overcome fear with Tony Robbins. Many women are motivated to have their own businesses by dastardly employers.
But when I read, to paraphrase, "I never thought I could overcome my poverty and ever be a homeowner," yes I thought I'd start with Bacardi Rum and Coke.
Then there was the Hollywood Women PR. More like Hancock Park and Fairfax District, but OK, people in other countries think anyone living in Los Angeles County is from Hollywood. Worth the sugar shock of a Jim Beam Whiskey Sour.
They had found an investor. I can't say for sure why they were so secretive about who. They said, "We're like the Chinese. We don't tell our business secrets." So I thought The investor is Chinese. But it was someone found on muscle beach who wanted to be kept secret.
I decided to drop in on them. They were visibly alarmed to see my face. It was clear to me that they had little to no inventory, there were no customers there, and the phone wasn't ringing. So why were they sitting there all day doing nothing behind desks waiting? Why wasn't one of them trying to cold call? Oh yea, it was a start up, but they didn't follow through on the leads I brought them in good faith. So, what was really going on? Maybe loosing money was a tax advantage for the investor?
Smirnoff Vodka Screwdriver anyone?
//
I think my ex-friend made more money promoting herself as a woman business owner who could lead the way than in that business. In fact the networking at these workshops is probably what brought in business.
Have you ever drunk through the layers of a Subterranean Bombshell?
C 2021
