One Minute Read

It was 1986 I was 27 years old and in a sales roles selling payroll processing. We were preparing for our 1986/1987 Sales Gala and kickoff. All sales executives would go to Melbourne to participate before some of us, (those that made their quotas,) left for our Achievers’ Club trip with our wives. That trip was to the US, my first ever visit in 1987. Each state team had to present a video at the Gala Dinner.

Our quotas had gone up tremendously for the following year, the theme of our video was obvious, we chose Mission Impossible. Our leading sales executive Greg and I had the starring role for the intro, Neil would operate the camera. We took off to the State Library in Perth City armed with a cassette recording, a cassette player, some gum leaves and a cigarette lighter.🚭🚭🚭

We looked for a quiet place, moved some books aside and put the cassette player down on a shelf. I walked up to Greg who was wearing fake glasses and moustache and said “The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain.“ He replied, “you want the Russian section” (in his best Russian accent,) and pointed to where the cassette player was. To this day I remember that exchange as if it was yesterday.

I pressed play. A voice, (Greg’s voice,) said: “Gentlemen, the golden days are gone,” (reference to the huge quota increases we had just received.) I only remember the beginning and the end of the message. No surprise on the ending, “your mission should you choose to accept it is to achieve this quota without fail, this tape will self destruct in 5 seconds.”

We turned off the camera, I put a bunch of qum leaves on top of the camera and lit the leaves. We turned the camera back on just as we had some good smoke going……… 💨🔥💨……..We got kicked out of the library, but we had our intro video! Back in the office the rest of the team played their parts. It was a hit at the gala!

Footnote: 36 years later Greg and his wife Ellie are still dear friends we stay in contact and nine times out of ten get some quality time in when we go back to Perth.

Footnote Footnote: We made our quotas the following year