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The Dashing Life and Exuberant Times of Brian Harrison....And Other Rare Anecdotes

Sunday, July 30, 2006

The #1 Rule of a Salesman

For a free-spirited person as myself, I have held the conviction that for the most part conferences and conventions, and these sort of things, are mostly ample amounts of time to sit and doodle. Every now and then an eccentric founder or motivator, from admist the dull speeches and plain faces, gets up with pink courdoroys or purple hair, and will divert my attention from playful daydreams so that I may be able to come away with a point or two in catchy phrases.
However, last weekend, I attended this meeting in Nashville on this healthy chocolate product. The very founders of this company flew in from Nevada. I actually shook hands with the founder and inventor, a lady who was a diabetic who decided to combine the antioxidants in dark chocolate with the antioxidants in the acai berry found in the Amazon rainforests, which gave birth to Xocai products. All this modern talk on the importance of antioxidants has much to do with the modern world's fear of cancer. Cancer is caused by free radicals inside ourselves. An antioxidant kills these free radicals, therefore anything with a high percentage of antioxidants is extremely effective in fighting off cancer...and many other physical ailments. What science is just finding out is that dark chocolate has the highest content of antioxidants of any food, which makes true dark cacao extraordinarily healthy as well as marketable.

Well, the conference poured this information into us and we sat, listened, and soaked in everything. I rode up to this meeting from Alabama with my dad and this friend of his whose name is, no joke, Bill Sales...and he is a master salesman. My dad's not too shabby either. But Bill has the natural affinity of the salesman...he likes to talk, and talk, and talk. He keeps his hair combed back and resembles an older version of Elvis. So we all ride to the hotel in Nashville, and there we met my friend, Rob Scott. Rob drove from Atlanta and he has this professionalism that I fail to possess. Where Rob is anxiously taking notes; I'm sitting beside him wondering when they're going to pass around the free samples again. On Saturday, Rob was the only one at the entire conference wearing a tie; I wore blue jeans and a wrinkled up T-shirt.

The motivation that is propelled from these conferences is amazing. In the course of a couple of hours, commitments are made, plans are constructed, courage is revived, and zeal is unleashed. Rob couldn't keep still in his chair; he couldn't wait to get out to the first individual who crossed his path...he was going to sell some serious chocolate. This enthusiasm came into play as we were riding down in the elevator with the pizza delivery man, when conversation was conducted, by Rob, and a vague interest was perpetuated by the pizza man. Formalities these days are to such niceties that you can never tell the difference between interests. Interests in opportunities; interests in only be nice; or as in this case, as you shall see, interests in something else. The Dominos man answered us that he wouldn't mind hearing our salespitch. So the enthusiast, Rob, gave him his room number. The Dominos man replied with a thank you and then walked away excited.

Well, the meeting ensued and as soon as the doors were reopened, Rob and I had a plan. We were both starving and desiring to advertise our chocolate, designed to order a pizza and have our aforementioned pizza guy deliver it. The phone rang in Rob's room and it was none other than the pizza guy off work and desiring to hear the spill. At the same time that Rob's on the phone, the cogs began turning and I realized that perhaps inviting the pizza guy up was a big mistake. It never escaped our notice the pizza delivery man was on the pervasive effeminate side, strictly speaking, he was outright gay...there was no mistaking that. But his extreme openness was, well, too open. As soon as Rob had told him he should come over and had hung up the phone, I exclaimed, "Rob, do you realize what you've just done? This gay pizza man is being led on; he wouldn't come over just for chocolate."
Rob had already slapped his forehead and said, "I know. He just mentioned to me on the phone that he gives good massages."
A good deal of laughter, dread, and chaos swarmed about the room. A panicky question erupted, "What shall we do?" The course decided upon was to get either my dad or the irrepressible, Bill Sales, in the room with us. I couldn't help but laugh at all four of us crowded in this hotel room, with this homosexual pizza guy coming up in the hope of goodness knows what, carrying with him his masseuse table and oils possibly.
We both ran downstairs to the lobby to announce to any help possible our strange plight. I approached my father, and proceeded to tell him our entire predicament. My dad laughed and said that he was sorry we were on our own on this one. And then he gave us the #1 rule of the salesman, always meet the gay guy in the lobby not the hotel room. So we apprehended him in the lobby and got all 5 generations of the chocolate company to pitch him the product. He revealed to us that he sells cosmetics the same way and, after a little while, he walked away I think disappointed in what we perhaps didn't have to sell.

Monday, July 24, 2006

Just Call Me Willy Wonka

What I am about to confess to you may very well astonish all, perplex many, and altogether insult a few. I have succumbed to intense pressure and...(no I'm not engaged or anything like that)...I just found myself submerged in something which I never would have foreseen...and would have laughed at had I caught wind of any of you involved in the same type thing. But I suppress no more information and admit that I, Brian Harrison, the very antithesis of businessmen...I, the wandering poet, far removed from materialism and questionnable dealings. I, the seeker of abstract themes, have just entered into the realm of network marketing.

It all began with my father who has always been involved in these business deals, who called me and I could tell by the tone of his voice that he was onto something apparently very hot. I could feel the aversion well up in my lungs as he talked on...until he announced what the product was...and so with the magic word, "Chocolate" the aversion was relieved and a curiosity had arisen. "Chocolate?" I thought to myself, "not just normal chocolate, but healthy chocolate. Chocolate that people could lose weight over. Chocolate that diabetics could actually eat, and it still tastes good. Why, I could possibly sell something like that."

But of course, there may be some inconsistencies that I may have to answer for. Namely, it was I that went tip-toeing around church after services a few years ago trying to escape from a friend of mine who just had to tell me about this great new phone plan. These friend-solicitors annoy the crap out of me...and I never want to be one of "those guys". However, there is a style, a way, an idea to go about things that may seem to work in similiar degrees but could be a world of a difference in another. Bottomline, what I say is that there is nothing worse in this world as lost opportunities. A failure is nothing but a lesson painfully won. But a missed opportunity is nothing at all...it just sucks courage, energy, ambition, and labels it all as zero, and a missed opportunity only teaches us to refrain from the daring leap or cling to our own false sense of security longer. So seeing a great opportunity gaping before me, after weighing and thinking things through, I jumped and took it. If it results in nothing but chasing wind, which I doubt, then it will at least be an experience and learning adventure of one of today's most rising business endeavors.

Network marketing is the purest form of capitalism. Instead of relying on set incomes to dictate to you how much you can and will make, this marketing strategy gives, with the right product, fair play to all who are willing to go far as they can. Of course, it's most advantageous to those who were quickest to arrive in the business the soonest. But that is the same for any business or matter if you truly look at it in an honest light.

But, as I always believed, its not so much about the money...as it is the freedom. I know I've heard it somewhere that time is our most valuable commodity. Perhaps potential would rival this. But regardless of the winner both are fed with freedom. And there is nothing so stifling to time and potential as a rat race that we are constantly feeding...with fear and greed. Ever stuck within...money controlling ourselves...instead of ourselves controlling money.

But enough theorizing. I've even constructed a website dealing with this chocolate. It's http://mxi.myvoffice.com/brianharrison/
It can tell you all about it. And then if you're really feeling brave and daring...you can call this number and I gurantee you that you will leave it knowing alot more about antioxidant dark chocolate. The number is 205-525-0668. Do it. I dare you.

Monday, July 17, 2006

New Horizons

I finally did it. I applied to the job that i think that i deep down always wanted to aspire towards. I'm in the midst of one of those times wondering what to do next and I thought to myself that i probably will never have the opportunity to do such a thing ever again...or at least I hope that I'm not wrong. That is working the night shift at a local Wafflehouse. I just came back from my first and probably last job interview where I did exceedingly well wearing flip flops and a plain white T-shirt. I'm gonna be a server and hopefully talk to all the people that saunter in there late nights. My legal name...Charles Brian Harrison...will now be known and displayed with a name tag as "Chuck". Oh the times, stories, and quarter-dropped songs that lay in wait for me.

Saturday, July 08, 2006

A Roadside Education

Currently, I am working a fireworks booth in the frothing humidity of Tennessee. The 4th of July has approached and Nathan and I intend on dealing as many small-scale explosives as possible. We live on the side of the road in a tent; For two weeks our existence is that of the gypsy merchant; fighting off highway marauders, drunken hillbillies, and tempestuous heat. Below are points of wisdom and universal education derived from such a unique experience.

1) There are 8,236,906 different combinations and styles of tatooes that a human being can possibly have on his or her arm. 21,473 of these can very well include various depictions of the Confederate Flag.

2) It is quite possible for a man to have a wife, a daughter, a cousin, a friend...and all of them mathematically result in the same person.

3) The World Cup is something that one drinks beer from while watching Nascar.

4) A mullet alone equals social rectitude. A mullet with a wrestler's mustache equals an aura of lionlike kingship.

5) There are 3 items that make the 4th of July what it is in Tennessee.
Rednecks, booze, and explosives.

6)Women suddenly become prettier when a man isliving in a tent for a good while, whether they have teeth or not.