Best Of - The Benevolent Benefactor

​My Total Life Freedom local friends and local networking friend Eric Laylon intersect for a second episode. In "Don't Fight Google or Facebook, Fight for Lunch", my friend Eric Laylon from ReachLocal shared great marketing tips and stats on the digital giants. I followed this with a story of who paid for lunch. In this episode, I am copying the format! 

Last week in my local MCBA meeting, Eric ran the business education segment and taught on the benefits of using Alignable for marketing. I've personally avoided it, but Eric gives some great points and tips that may have persuaded me to look into it more. Thus, I wanted to share it with you. LinkedIn is a business platform for business owners and professionals (employees). Alignable is for small business owners locally (not nationally like LinkedIn). The platform is already niched to local and small business owners, which makes it a natural marketing companion to in-person local networking. Alignable has niche groups that you can join of "like interest". Eric says he has gotten so much more business through Alignable vs LinkedIn because of the platform's ability to hyper-niche. Eric explained that you can set up your profile with "who you'd like to connect with". Then, Alignable takes your preferences and puts you in front of those people. Eric uses the premium $30/mo version because the free version limits you to the # of people you can connect with. I thought Eric did a great job presenting Alignable and it really intrigued me. What do you think? Do you use this platform? I'd love to hear about it if you do.

​A few leads came in this week. The first one was military-like. My friend James Hardy of the Carpet Guys was in an online group and saw a request for a house cleaner. He was in the process of typing in my name and website when something else caught his attention. The owner of a local cafe gave my name first. He recommended me and then texted me. "Ken, do you clean for the cafe?" I said no, but I do clean the owner's home. Then he told me about the recommendation to Steven Hunsberger. I thanked him and shared that Steven is the president of my chamber and we're friends. Then I contacted Steven and he felt so embarrassed that his friend Ken and the only cleaner of 400 members in his chamber didn't come to mind when he was looking for a house cleaner. There are multiple takeaways here. First, I am so thankful that I was triangulated by multiple friends to recommend me and they all knew each other! Another is that I have done a poor job in communicating that I clean houses to Steven in all of our interactions including our recent breakfast! Steven knew that I cleaned offices, but had no idea that I did houses too. We talked on the phone and I answered all of his questions in hopes of educating him on the various options he had for hiring a house cleaning service.

Another lead that came in this week was for my wife's cousin Abby, who is the manager of a local historic barn for wedding venues. This was a follow-up from a proposal I did for them 6 months ago. I suggested that they find a decent cleaner to do the twice-weekly cleanings between weddings and hire me for biweekly or quarterly deep cleaning. They got back to me this week and want me to "open" the wedding season with a spring cleaning. Many of you are in your hometown where your family lives. I did NOT experience this in my first business. My Philly biz is different. I have taken calls and even done estimates for family. Yes, it's hard. But you have to treat them exactly the same as any other customer. They will expect the family discount. That's fine if you're new in business and you'd like to get traction, gain experience, get before & afters, and a customer testimonial. But when you're in my position of optimizing, it doesn't matter who the clients are. I'm only looking for a certain quality of person, price, and schedule to fit into the goals that I have for my business. Abby is my cousin, but she completely understands good business and professionalism when she sees it. She looks at the family part differently. She wants quality and doesn't want family to save a buck. She wants family because she trusts family more than non-family. Trust is more important than price. By the end of the week, Abby booked us for a $1,000 deep cleaning of the barn.

To close this episode, I need to give my private investigator's report on Who Paid for Lunch Clue? This started with "Allow a Giver to Give", when my friend John Stange from DesireJesus.com paid for lunch when Total Life Freedom Philly met up in November 2020! He is so generous and we were all thankful that he paid for us! I proclaimed after lunch and in the podcast that I would pay for the next lunch. That next lunch came in mid-January. I was poised and ready to pay. I quietly asked the waitress over and suggested that I'd like to pay. She told me. "I'm sorry, but someone already paid." I was flummoxed! How could someone get to it first? I share the whole story in this episode. I never concluded who actually paid for lunch, so I made it my mission to solve this case, Sherlock Holmes style. Let's review the game of Who Paid for Lunch Clue and its participants, followed by detailed investigatory work on my end to solve this riddle! Remember, the lunch ended like this. The waitress came over to our table and said. "I have good news. Someone called in and said to pay for the table with the guy with the hat." That guy with the hat is also known as the "The Loud Guy". So whodunnit! Let's examine all of the evidence.
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• The Pastor aka John Stange - He paid for the first lunch. I asked him quietly to allow me to pay for lunch two before I asked the waitress. He agreed. He is the leading suspect from multiple players on the board. He denies emphatically! There was even a hypothesis that his wife was the silent partner and called in the payment ahead of time. I confronted John in a text and he denied this false claim. 
• Innocent Emily aka Emily Brunner the photographer - She booked the restaurant and had the easiest opportunity to pay ahead and blame it on the hat! None of us suspected her royal innocence until I cross-examined her on Facebook Messenger. Here is her reply. You be the judge. "It truly wasn’t me! I still think it was John Schuchman. I saw him take out his credit card before he left the table on the way to the restroom. I know he said that he tried to pay and the hostess said it was already taken care of, but that only bit of evidence I have points to him. If it truly wasn’t him then I think it had to be a benevolent benefactor". Likely story Emily! Your best guess is The Loud Guy or a Benevolent benefactor. When I pressed further, she had this answer. "It’s a mystery - that’s for sure! It could be Desha, but it seems unlikely that her strategy would have been to sneak a payment in. Did we ask Brad if he paid? Now I know that the next time I make a reservation, I’ll have to give them my credit card when I book the reservation!" She held to her innocence and passed the blame to The Newbie or The Absentee! For one, Brad Imming was quarantined at home and had the ability.
• The Loud Guy aka John Schuchman the realtor - He was wearing his Christian Illuminati hat and left the table conveniently after I asked the waitress to pay to "use the restroom". We chatted back and forth several times and have gotten nowhere. He was not going to the restroom, but as Emily keenly observed... "I saw him take out his credit card". He admitted that he tried to pay and even swears that he didn't. "Ken, I'll show you my credit card statements to prove it!" John indeed had the intent and the ability, but he was thwarted of paying for lunch exactly as I was! He may be loud, but he's innocent like Emily!
• The Newbie aka Desha Utsick the life coach & photographer - Emily asserts it could have been Desha and then recanted her story! She was the wildcard in this game of Who Paid for Lunch Clue as she was the Newbie. She is a friend of Stange's, so I tried a different approach. I asked John. "Was it Desha?" He said. "I know her and this was her first TLF meet-up in person. She had no idea what to expect, how many would be there, and more importantly, she knew nothing about taking the group tab." I reluctantly agreed. Desha the Newbie was off the hook!
• The Cleaner aka Ken Carfagno - I have shared my side of the story this whole time and you all know I didn't pay! Why do the others like The Loud Guy still insist that it was me? Could it have been me or maybe my Silent Partner Teresa? I know my wife didn't do it or I because there were no charges on any of our statements.
• The Absentee aka Brad Imming the digital marketer - This is a new angle that I did not cover on my last round of investigation. I messaged Brad and I wasn't subtle. "Was it you, Brad?!" He replied very defensively. "It was not I. Is John denying it?" I skipped his redirect and pressed. "Do you have an alibi?". His answer is chilling. "Sure, I don't even know where y'all ate or how to logistically pay when I'm not there. John may be a pastor, but he was the culprit the two meals I was at where the bill was paid...so if he says it's not him, he needs to go to confessional!" Brad pleaded the 5th and then blamed 100% on our loving, generous pastor. Wait, did he say that John pays for meals all the time. Thanks Brad! You're off the hook. The Pastor, you're on it again!
• The Connector aka Vincent Pugliese of Total Life Freedom -  Vincent was in Florida enjoying freedom with his family. He is the leader of TLF and very generous. He did know we were out to lunch and had the means to do it. However, when I pressed him for answers. He only said this. "I wish it was me." Dang! With an answer like that from a generous man, I had to believe him.
• The Silent Partner aka Andrea Stange wife of John - When I pressed John, he held to his original assertion. It wasn't his wife. Well, my wife Teresa and I had dinner with the Stanges' a few weeks ago. I had an opportunity to ask directly and patiently waited my turn. John got up to use the restroom, exposing his wife to my direct line of questioning. "Where were you on the night of...." Oh, sorry. I got a little excited. "Andrea, we're trying to solve the mystery of who paid for our lunch. We know it wasn't John and he is denying it. But others believe it could have been his Silent Partner." Andrea laughed at the notion of her calling ahead of her husband's dinner with friends to pay for them. Was the laugh a tell? I don't think so. I believe her. It wasn't John or Andrea!
• The Waitress & and The Hat - Emily may have known the waitress just like Mr. Body knew the singing telegram girl in the movie, Clue. Did Emily coordinate this with her? Emily's alibi is airtight as she was sitting next to me the whole time. The waitress claims that somebody called in to pay for the table with the guy with the hat. The Loud Guy has the hat and what was the hat? It was a Christian Illuminati secret society. Actually, it was a men's group that John belonged to at church. Could another member have been there, seen John, and fronted the bill? It's unlikely as John lives over an hour away in Lancaster, home of the Amish who don't use electricity or phones. How could a friend of John's use a phone to call in the payment or even have a credit card in the first part? 

So who paid? I am stumped and have only one conclusion. It was the Benevolent benefactor and her name is Innocent Emily! Just kidding. I have no clue and you can quote me on that!