Another Thursday, Another Meeting

Okay, new plans for this week's meeting. First, everyone who isn't my boss will now be named "Mike." Because the odds are with them. Second, this sucked way more than last week - I fear we may have caught lightning in a bottle with that delightful examination. Either way, I wrote stuff down. Here we go.

You know what to do to continue.


10:32 The 10:30 meeting hasn't started yet, but the "hilarity" has already begun:

Me: "Did you bring the stuff from last week?"
Mike 1: "Oh yeah, I have what you just handed out."
Me: "What? From last week?"
Mike 1: "This week."
Me: "So... your answer is no?"

10:38 Review of the activity log (which was what I was referencing in the last post), which nobody did, really. Apparently, according to D., the goal was "to show you how short the week actually is." Hm. Too short to read the e-mails asking to bring the completed charts, apparently.

10:40 The main phone rings, I have to go get it. I'm sure I'm missing gems. (I will be proven wrong.)

10:42 D. is telling us how great recruiting is going. Okay. How are these guys who are awesome being awesome? 6 zillion dollars in loans per second, rollin' in Bentleys and stuff... These guys sound great. I'm sure they're fiction. Anyway, they fear change. That's not why they're good, that's just what D. said. Apparently, this ubermench's computer desktop is a clusterfuck. If you want to be successful, scatter icons all over your desktop. It means you've committed to technology. Which, apparently is what you want to be doing. The highlight of this is when D. describes how you can't really do anything new with mail pieces unless you create "a pop-up mailer that grabs the guy in the face." He then proceeds to palm his head.

10:46 Have we heard of Barry Habib? Of course not. (Actual guy. Google him, if you want to.) Apparently, D. and Barry met when D. was awesome. That's what I learned from D.'s story. Also, I learned to be consistent with your marketing efforts. Actually, that's useful if you're marketing. Know your market, that kind ofzzzzzz...

10:48 Whoever's next door starts sawing through the wall. This is shocking, but no one seems to mind, but me. I think I'm going crazy.

10:50 Think of this when you're buying a house: "Realtors stand there and say 'Wow, I wish they'd, I don't know, die?'"

10:51 But, we have to get back to Barry Habib. FYI: you do not use just one of Barry Habib's names. Leaving out his first or last name is displeasing to Barry Habib. D. made a website in, like, 1991. Out of stray electrons and grass clippings. The Internet was a wild place in 1991, and HTML was scary. We did get this golden exchange:

Drago: "I didn't know HTML, so I drew up my website sort of 'what you see is what you get,'"
Mike 2: "WYSIWIG!"
Drago: (slightly thrown by this outburst) "Yeah... And bought a book..."

The rest of the conversation is about how he used a complicated system of pullies and GHB to tame and seduce the Early Interwebs; screw that Prodigy, that CompuServe, that AOL... He was going to be on the frontier! Or something. I think this is just supposed to make us think that he's a bad-ass. Unless he's suggesting that these guys get into something that's untamed, like beaming signals directly into people's heads. I have no idea.

10:54 Is "metadata" pronounced "met-ah," or "me-tah"? I think it's the first, but D.'s pretty convincingly uttering the second. Also, he just says "To make a long story... longer..." Heh. He involved Realtors in his Daring Website Scheme, and they loved it, because they were from the Stone Age. "Realtors weren't young, like they are now, you see." I'm calling bullshit on that statement.

10:55 D. asks approximately 2,000 questions that no one understands, and they're critical financial thinghies. I'm serious, I think he started speaking in tongues. He mentioned Greenspan, and then proceeded to lament people quoting him out of context or some shit. I'm really baffled. My notes literally say:

Do you know where to find:
-I have no fucking idea

Now D. tells a story about a client who was a CIA satellite guru who apparently made some EMP Death Ray. I am not making any of this up. We are off the rails.

10:59 What the HELL are they doing next door?

11:00 You have to pay money to subscribe to these things D.'s suggesting The Gang subscribe to. Therefore, I guarantee they won't do it.

11:02 Now he's turned into Lao Tzu: "Thought without action is but a daydream." Also, this gem, regarding Japanese culture:

"They'd eat a rice ball a day, take public transportation, and save all their money! They're more interested in thinking about why a leaf falls this way or that!"

Really. All right, then. Why did that come up? I couldn't tell you.

11:05 Ratios get broken down. The lesson I learn is that people are dipshits with their money. Granted, I already know this, because I'm a dipshit with my money, but apparently all too often, loan originators say "Screw it! Let's get them the highest loan amount they can afford, and then some! Let's make it so they're fiscally crippled in 36 months. That'll be fun." D. suggests considering the whole transaction with a clean heart, do a service, and don't put people into shit they can't afford. He's the Mother Theresa of lending.

11:07 I make a completely unintelligable note. It actually says "Have>10 bus ref sc / Have > 5 Strat" This is neither funny, nor helpful to me.

11:10 Do you make friends with your Realtors, or do you meet like professionals? Well, last week, he called them all slimebags, essentially, so I'm going to guess the answer is "like professionals." I am wrong. You do both! Hooray! But don't have too much of a social life with these guys. Okay. No problem.

11:12 Math.

11:14 Math ends. Exhortation begins. Get Partnerships. This begs the question: why do these people not have partnerships? I mean, it's hard to get Realtors or builders on board, but come on, you have to have met someone on accident... Your personalities aren't that crippling.

11:15 In 1992, things were different. Though, to hear D. tell it, steam power had just been invented, and we hadn't yet received the number zero from the Arabian Peninsula. I don't know, I was 11. But we might have had AOL, like, 1.0. I'm serious about that.

11:16 Do research? This suggestion is met with audible groans. Wow.

11:18 ANOTHER guy he talked to and wants to hire. Oh, my God, we'll never escape from here. He's really obsessed with the fact that he thought of what these guys are doing before they started doing it. I applaud sarcastically. No I don't, but I wish I did.

11:21 A review of how Google works. No, really, with rankings and whatnot. Plus, we espouse the values of an MLS search engine that captures your search. Which makes me think of some sweaty guy sitting in a basement, sifting through your house searches. Eegh.

11:25 D. used to send Realtors a rate sheet that he would mangle and fold before stuffing it into the envelope. He said it was "pre-crumpled for their convenience." That's funny.

11:26 We had a good Jan/Feb; our pricing was good, our volume needed to be better. If everybody does 50% more volume, everybody ends up happy. Except me - I will still fail to give a shit.

11:29 That's enough of patting ourselves on the back. D. wants us to know that he's back to being sold on CW. Whew, that's a "relief." Mike 3's phone rings, and - get this - HE DOESN'T ANSWER IT! It's a miracle.

11:30 D. wants us to succeed and grow, but we apparently have no mechanism to train people. Mike 1's sarcastic comment ("We want superstars?") is the impetus for a 2-minute digression on grooming people within a company. A story is shared about two people from another company that apparently would assault people. Charming.

11:31 Mike 2's phone rings, he leaves. The digression continues - D. doesn't want to do 24 hours of loans to be freaky-successful, like some guy from Oakbrook who does $1.2 BILLION dollars.

11:32 D. takes this opportunity to make fun of Mike 4's work ethic. He then proceeds to explain his swipe and why it's not only funny but accurate. Oh, and mean.

11:35 "Try to come into the office" speech. Do you really need a speech for that? Should you? Other pearls of wisdom: "Each failure is a tuition payment towards [something]," and "Stay on your toes: if you're on your heels, it's too easy to fall backwards."

11:37 Corporate movie. In order to show his support, D. exits the room. Snarky comments ensue, regarding the quality of the movie. They are not funny, so I didn't write them down. Mike 5's on his blackberry, Mike 3 is text-messaging. This is awesome.

11:40 D.'s back to lean against the door jamb.

11:42 D. leaves again. I begin to wonder how cold Lake Michigan is, and how long it would really be before I went into shock. I hope it would be immediately.

11:45 D. comes back, pulls a chair into the doorway and sits down. As a manager, it's all about body language. Mike 5's phone goes off, it's a text message, so he can respond without leaving.

11:46 I crack my neck. Sadly, I fail to become paralyzed.

11:50 The movie ends. Now we're going to share what we bring personally that makes us unique and sets us apart personally from other people. The first answer, from Mike 1, is "product knowledge." First of all, that had better not make you unique; that ought to be expected. Second of all, LIAR. LIAR LIAR LIAR. WHY DO YOU LIE? Unless you're saying that your astonishing lack of knowledge sets you apart.

11:52 Mike 2 returns. You missed the whole movie. To quote Robert Muldoon, "clever girl..."

11:55 Digression alert!

11:56 Mike 3's phone rings again. He doesn't answer it again. Amazing.

11:57 Wait. I zoned out for 15 seconds, and D.'s pretending to sell a space shuttle. What?

12:00 Yeah, I have no idea where we are. We do get little Sales 101 Comedy Hour, in order to tell us not to use canned stuff, and be yourself when you're talking to your client. I sigh deeply. D. doesn't look at our business as purely sales. He also doesn't look at the People's Republic of China as purely Communist.

12:02 I feel kind of bad about that joke, because the philosophy of "don't be an animal" is good and kind and sound. To wit:

• Educate people. Be cool.
• Have all the information that you might need.
• Provide "411 service" if necessary
• Do your homework

Apparently, knowing is more than half the battle, contrary to what G.I. Joe and Josh's Venn Diagrams would have you believe.

12:05 Mike 2 waves his hands fruitily, and quasi-whispers to me that he has to leave. I can't describe how weird this was for me. There's the aspect of it where I don't give a crap whether you stay or go, there's the wild, quasi-apologetic gesticulation, and there's the fact that he whispered it so as not to interrupt, but the whisper was more distracting and distinct than standing on the table and yodeling his message would've been. It's like he lost all fine motor control. It was amazing.

12:07 More awesome things D did when he was a loan consultant. I'm beginning to fade.

12:09 We're back on the script/schedule, which is bor-ring.

12:10 Another damn digression, this time, it's the "don't be perceived as a 'Salesman'" pitch. (P.S. Too late.)

12:15 We have sample exercises to do, of the "what do you do in this situation?" variety. However, we're not waiting for answers, we're just charging through. I'm encouraged, but apparently "too bored to even blog," according to my notes.

12:22 I regain consciousness when D. gets bored and starts skipping pages. He then moves into Q&A. One Q is A'd, everybody lapses back into silence, so D. launches back in, answers all the questions himself. His answers are better anyway.

12:25 He closes the binder... almost there... just a few more seconds...

12:26 "In summary," whee! D. recommends monitoring our activities, because it will be useful. No one will do this.

12:30 No one has questions, we're done!