Chapter 1

It would have been too much to hope that Jerry Feller possessed either above-average athletic skills or was outstanding academically. He was neither a gifted athlete nor an exceptional student. If he did have that talent or ability, he might have received a scholarship offer to help defray the cost of college, but he received no offers. What could be said was that Jerry was mature enough to understand that having a college degree would result in earning more money in a lifetime than not having a degree.

Having the maturity to understand what he needed to succeed in life started in high school with his realization that he was attracted to members of the opposite sex. How to have these young ladies become interested in him, was something he thought about.

At the school dances, he noticed that girls liked to dance to all types of music as opposed to the boys, who preferred slow-tempo dances. The boys he could see that danced to the fast-tempo music were popular and attracted girls.

Jerry wondered how he could learn to dance to these fast-tempo songs. He thought of asking Connie, his next-door neighbor, to teach him how to fast dance. She was two years older than him, and he was embarrassed to ask her. He finally did find the nerve to ask her to teach him to dance to these fast-tempo songs.

Caroline and two of her girlfriends took on this project of teaching Jerry to dance to these songs. His desire to learn and have some natural ability enabled him to become quite good at dancing to fast-tempo music. One of his dance teachers said he had the moves of a “snake” dancing to this music.

Having this dancing ability did result in Jerry attracting young ladies. That attraction further resulted in Jerry losing his virginity late in his junior year in high school. Being able to engage in sex was better than just thinking about it, which was the case for most of his male friends. He didn’t become involved with anyone and just played the field. In thinking about it later, he wondered if his involvement with these young women could have negatively affected his academic results.

With the cost of college being the dominant consideration, Jerry went to a local community college for two years and then transferred to Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana. He lived with his parents on the outskirts of Indianapolis while attending the community college. At the university, he lived off campus.

Jerry’s success with co-eds continued when he was in college. Much of that was his dancing ability, but his being good-looking was a help. Another reason for his success was hints his dance instructors gave him about what to say to females. He was told not to say anything negatively about a girl’s dress or looks but instead to give compliments on those two things. That imparted knowledge and his developing self-confidence made for an enjoyable two years at the university. Looking back, he wished it could have been four years at IU.

In the college classroom, his pattern of academic success continued as it had been in high school. He was a slightly above-average student with grades of B minus. Those grades were sufficient for him to graduate with a business management degree.

Jerry knew this was going to be the end of his formal schooling. He didn’t have the ability or desire for law, graduate, or medical school. Even if he did have the desire, his grades would have probably prohibited him from being admitted into those schools. What he was going to do in life to earn a living was something he gave considerable thought to.

It would have been nice to have some friends at school in a tech start-up company that he could get involved in, but that didn’t happen. There were company recruiters on campus, but none of the companies there interested him in the entry positions they offered. Because of that, he spent considerable time at the library reading the WSJ and business magazines to find employment that would interest him. He was also surfing the net, trying to find employment opportunities.

He read an article in the WSJ about Myles Owens, a billionaire who owned a few businesses and was the owner of an NBA team. This article said that Myles had purchased an athletic shoe company and planned to rebrand it. Jerry later found another article that said Ben Palmer was retiring from the NBA to become the mid-west sales manager for this shoe company. The name of the shoe company was to be Bifty Athletic Shoes.

It was a logical assumption for Jerry to make that a sales manager needed to have salespeople to manage. That this was a new company starting up caught his interest. Maybe he could get in on the ground floor of a growing business. Because of those thoughts, he mailed his resume to Ben Palmer, with a cover letter indicating that he was applying for a salesperson position with this new shoe company. He said he was a hard worker and accepted the challenge that his compensation would correlate with his performance.

Jerry’s application to Ben caused some interest because Ben did a virtual interview with Jerry and followed up with an in-person interview. After this last interview, Ben offered Jerry the independent contractor position of salesperson for the entire State of Indiana. Jerry received training at the office in northern Illinois for the product and the procedures involved in selling Bifty shoes. With this training completed, Jerry was on his own to perform as a salesperson.

The following two years were productive for Jerry. He became a workaholic and established several retail outlets selling these shoes in Indianapolis and the surrounding area. The business model was that the retail store only needed to set aside a small area devoted to Bifty shoes. This area would contain a limited display of the various models and colors of Bifty shoes. The store would receive a commission for selling shoes by placing a computer order. The selected shoes would be sent by the distribution center to the customer’s home.

Receiving the commission for selling these shoes at the store was partly responsible for these stores agreeing to handle this line of shoes. Another incentive for the store agreeing to do this was the reduced commissions they would receive for any online sales made by a buyer who lived in that store’s zip code. The store would get this commission as long as the store was in business or until one year after the last in-store sale of a shoe, whichever came first.