Free Bad People by Evan Cobb, Michael Canfield Page B

be having this much fun.”
    The ice teas arrive, wordlessly delivered by a tiny busser, and the waiter finally arrived to take their order. Luke ordered something and Connie ordered something without thinking much about it. They could go right back to talking, she hoped, she had felt a wonderful release, talking about comic book stores, ice tea, and regular non-agonizing things. But the waiter’s intervention had messed with the rhythm and she felt awkward again.
    “Hm,” she said, in placeholder speak. He seemed oblivious to the silence. In fact he seemed to be taking advantage of it, studying her, not in an invasive way, but genuinely interested.
    “What are you thinking?” she asked.
    “That’s a big question. I’m thinking several things at once. Tell me about your business.”
    Oh. Back to that. “Well it’s a partnership. It took me a long time to even think of it as a business, it’s a group of different revenue streams. Not that special, anyone could do it.”
    “No. They can’t,” he said with odd firmness. “You’ve made a tremendous achievement. That needs to be acknowledged. I acknowledge it.”
    She smiled. “If you look at it that way. But we never did. Well, let me say… I never did. We took a series of steps, a series of steps going back eighteen years. The keys is consistency. Consistency in all things.”
    “I would have expected you to say something else.”
    “Like what?”
    “Any number of things. Education of course.”
    “That’s good. You never have enough, but you can always get more. Consistency in pursuing it would get you there.”
    “Okay. Boldness. Courage.”
    “Overrated. If you’re unsure, go slower for awhile, keep heading in the direction of your goal.”
    “Ah. There. A goal. A goal is certainly the key to success.”
    “Goals change. They must change, to stay relative to your purpose. You might set a goal: ‘I want to make a million dollars.’ Okay. And then you refine it. A million dollars for what. For security? For fun?”
    “Just to see yourself do it.”
    “Fine. Okay good, just to see if you can do it. I think that’s a valid goal. And then how are you going to do it? Through what means? An invention of some kind? Perhaps. Real Estate? Probably you don’t intend knocking off a bank.”
    “No. Of course not.”
    “And a time line. What else? A dozen things, then a hundred, all falling into place as you refine your goal. You refine it, and you take the steps. It doesn’t matter, I don’t believe, how little the steps are, how many missteps, how many course corrections as long as you consistently —there’s that word again!—move in the direction of your goal. And the more you focus on your goal the more your goal becomes concrete. If you’re goal-oriented, that is. But don’t forget to live your life along the way.”
    “It almost sounds unglamorous.”
    “It’s not glamorous. It isn’t sexy. You have to find that in other ways. Sometimes making a lot of money is really boring.”
    “I wouldn’t have ever expected to hear that.”
    “I think it should be said more often, Luke. I have a bit of a quandary in that area. I do a lot of public speaking. I do enjoy it, or I used to until recently. I thought I was helping people. I think I was just entertaining them. They go to those things looking for a quick fix. You discover very quickly that nobody takes a seminar to learn how to make her life busier. People go to be told that everything is easy. They want somebody to hand them the secret, and there isn’t one.”
    “Everything that you are saying is really resonating with me,” Luke said. He leaned forward. “I was involved in a business venture earlier this year. The risk seemed relatively small, the reward great. But I ended up putting a lot of work into it. The money seemed fantastic and the client basically acceded to my price without any argument, yet here I am, the work is done, but when you break the money down over the months I