I do like to be beside the seaside

by John Passmore

The trouble with a part-time business is that things can get out of hand.

Yesterday, you may have seen that I gave out 100 cards in one day: 50 in the morning - and then went mad and gave out another 50 in the evening - and it didn't seem very hard at all.

Today I posed the question to myself: "If it's not hard to give out 50 in no time at all, how long does it take to give out 100 - and how many people would I get to talk to?

A key condition was that this had to be bolted onto something I was doing as part of my other life. Today this happened to be driving up to Southwold to empty the beach hut. All those seaside bits and pieces which might break when they move the hut or rust while it spends the winter in Southwold Pier car park - they all had to come home.

It took about five trips with my arms full of stuff - but of course, walking back with my hands empty, I could give a card to everyone I passed. And they all said: "Thank you."

Then I stopped in town and walked round the little market. This did not go brilliantly to begin with. Talking to the woman behind the farm shop butcher's stall, I got as far as: "Does anyone ever moan to you about the cost of living and the credit crunch?"

And she said: "No, we're all cheerful here. You've got to make the best of things..."

Clearly she was set for a lecture on positive thinking and while I heartily agree with her, she was interfering with my 1 minute 45 seconds. I gave her a card and moved on.

At the Swedish Goods stall, however, matters progressed much better and I'll be phoning back today to ask "what did you like best?"

In the cafe I had an audience of three for my little piece - two of them teachers (teachers make great distiributors).

The cards flew out of my hands: "This is for you... have one of these...I'm going to give you this... have you had one of these..."

And nobody attacked me, nobody called the police. In fact nobody said anything more offensive than: "Thank you very much."

Maybe I have a nice smile after all...

I had been at it for about 55 minutes when I came to the vet's surgery. He was just locking up but he opened the door.

"Are you the vet," I asked him. "Because I'm looking for business people who might like to make an extra income. I wondered if you might be one of those."

And he said he was. He got the last card, I got his contact details - and the whole process had taken 55 minutes.

I went home with a full car and a feeling of considerable achievement. And guess what happened when I arrived? I picked up my phone from the little cup holder by the gearstick and saw the light was flashing: An email.

Executive Services wished to report that someone had visited my hosted business opportunity site and left their details to ask for further information. Leaving a decent interval for him to have a good look at his information back, I called him. He was in a meeting and so we'll talk tomorrow.

And then, in the early evening, a call from a man who said: "You won't remember me but we talked about your discounted utilities in August last year. I'd like to take the gas and electricity, please."

So I'm going to see him when I get back from holiday (and he's paying BT £4.75 a month for free evening and weekend calls which can't be right...)

So tell me, is this a part-time business?