15
Mom was right. The Stinky Cheese Farm’s butter, milk, and cream were all mind-blowing, and a great deal too because Riley wasn’t going to charge for delivery since he was in Petersville anyway. His butter would be a little harder to work with because it came in different size lumps instead of sticks, but it was worth it. He weighed each so you knew how much you were paying for, but there was nothing on the package to help you measure out pieces like the lines printed on the paper around sticks of butter. I’d just have to use Mom’s cooking scale to measure out what I needed.
We still had to make deals with suppliers for the other ingredients. To do that, the book said we were supposed to call back the wholesalers with the lowest prices and play them off each other to see if we could get them to go even lower. Since Josh and I didn’t have the first clue how to do this, I decided to ask my dad for help. He’d done a lot of negotiating when he worked at the bank, so I thought he was qualified even though he was family. Besides, I had a feeling Winnie’s warning against doing business with family applied more to siblings than parents. Just to be safe though, I decided not to tell her.
It was the day after Josh and I had made the calls. Dad was in his office reading another book about windmills. His latest plan was to put windmills up all over our property to harness the wind that constantly whips around our house, threatening to knock it down. He was sure that with the right number, we could power our whole house. He was super excited about it. He kept talking about how we needed to go to Denmark to see their windfarms, because they get something like half their electricity from wind there. I was terrified that this was the one project he’d actually stick with. He’d shown me photos of the windmills he wanted, and they were like something out of a sci-fi nightmare. It was bad enough up there on Terror Mountain without things that looked like Transformers towering over us.
“Dad, can I ask you something?” I said from the door to the office. “It’s about the doughnut stand. It’s kind of a business question.”
He closed the book. “Sure. Fire away.”
I went inside and showed him all the information Josh and I had gotten from the suppliers.
“So now we’re supposed to negotiate for the best prices,” I explained, “but something doesn’t seem right about that. Isn’t a price a price? I mean, you have the choice whether to buy something or not, but can you actually tell the seller to lower his price? Is that even legal?”
Dad laughed. “Yes, it’s legal.”
“Even if it is. It still feels weird, like something I shouldn’t do.”
“You got to get over that. You know what you need?”
“What?”
“A pitch, what you’re going to say to convince these guys to lower their prices.”
“Oh, yeah, they talk about that in the book.”
“Yeah, a really good pitch,” he said and stood up from his desk all of a sudden like he’d just remembered he had somewhere to be but then didn’t go anywhere. “All right, take me through everything. This is going to be so great!”
I must have just been sitting there staring at him because then he clapped and said, “Come on! Get me up to speed. We’ve got a lot of work to do.”
That’s when I knew Winnie’s warning about family did apply to parents, but by then it was too late.
“Okay, so first I made a list of—”
“Wait!” He grabbed my arm. “You know what we need?”
“No, what?”
“Supplies!” He sounded way too excited.
“I’ve got the book and paper and stuff.”
“No. We need to be able to see all the information someplace. Visual representation of information is key. We’ll need poster board and different colored Post-its and flags and markers and maybe a microphone so we can tape you and you can hear yourself doing the pitch and—are you writing this down?”
The good news was, Dad had found a new project, one he actually knew something about. The bad news was, that project was me.
Four hours and one trip to the office supply store in Crellin later, my parents’ office had been transformed into Tom Levin’s Negotiation Boot Camp. Every piece of information I had about the doughnut business was now color coded on Post-its and stuck to the wall along with a poster board with my pitch in bullet points, the words I was supposed to “punch” highlighted in neon orange. Dad had this theory that you had to “punch” the most important words in each sentence.
“I think I’m ready now.” My voice was hoarse from practicing the pitch.
“Almost,” he said. “You still need to hit those punch words harder.”
“Okay.”
“It’s definitely better, much better, but I’m beginning to think what you really need now is a dry run.”
“I’ve already run through it twenty times!”
“No, I mean live, with a real person, so you have to think on your feet. You need to know there’s nothing wrong with negotiating, that you’re not going to get into trouble. Otherwise, you won’t sound confident, and confidence is key, right? The worst that can happen is somebody says no.”
“Fine,” I moaned. “What do you want to do?”
“Get your coat.”
This was going to be painful. I could just tell.
Fifteen minutes later, my father pulled up in front of Renny’s on Main Street.
“You want me to negotiate at the Gas Mart?” I said.
“Yup.”
“But the prices are printed on everything.”
“So?”
“You can’t negotiate in a place like that!” Now I was getting angry. The stuff he’d made me do in the office was embarrassing enough but at least that was in private.
“Of course you can. A price is just whatever the seller and the buyer agree to. That’s what I’m trying to teach you.”
“Fine!” I yelled. “But this
