The Honey Bee

A Business Parable About Getting Un-stuck and Taking Control of Your Financial Future

Jake Stenziano, Gino Barbaro

• Publisher: River Grove Books
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN:
  9781632992420
• eBook ISBN:
  9781632992437
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Real Estate
• Index: Business

A business parable that teaches the value of cultivating multiple streams of income—the surest, most achievable means of creating generational wealth.

The Honey Bee tells the story of Noah—a disappointed, disaffected salesman who feels like his life is going nowhere until the day he has a chance encounter with a man named Tom Barnham, the beekeeper. In his charming, down-home way, Tom the “Bee Man” teaches Noah and his wife Emma how to grow their personal wealth using the lessons he learned from his beekeeping passion.

Full of concrete lessons delivered through chapter after chapter of engaging vignettes, each of which includes actionable advice for new or aspiring entrepreneurs. Workbook-style sections at the end of each chapter help bring the lessons home, including questions to help you apply the lessons to your own business, and links to rich digital resources for even more information on how to get started creating your own multiple streams of income.

THE BEEKEEPER

When the tire blows, I’m composing my resignation letter in my head.

It’s become my favorite way to pass the time on long drives, and this stretch is a particularly painful one. I don’t know if it’s the potholes or the lack of anything to look at but trees, but the further I drive, the less happy I am.

No doubt that’s why I’m in a darker mood than usual, and debating whether to open the letter with Dear Asshat, or To the Douchebags Whom It May Concern. Both have their appeal, and both are, as far as I’m concerned, true.

I’ve found that the take-this-job-and-shove-it fantasy is particularly helpful on bad days. And this is definitely one of those. Not only am I going home empty-handed, but it’s also bucketing rain, which is going to make a terrible drive just that much longer. It just gives me more time to dwell on a job I can barely tolerate, but from which I can never seem to escape.

When the tire goes, I’m so deep in the daydream of quitting that it takes me a moment to realize what’s happened. Before my brain connects the dots between the loud noise and the sudden sideways lurch of the car, the back end is already breaking loose on the wet pavement.

I fight the skid, pulling the wheel first one way, then the other as the car fishtails wildly. Through the blur of the wet windshield, the pickets of a guardrail sweep through my vision.

In a heart-pounding few seconds, it’s over. I limp the car to the shoulder. There’s a wobbling, scraping noise from the back that doesn’t sound good. I squint through the rain, over the guardrail: It looks like a drop.

I loosen my fingers from their death grip on the wheel and take a deep breath. That was close. Just a few extra feet and I might have been upside down at the bottom of a ravine. For the first time today, I feel lucky.

It makes me realize how stupid the job-quitting daydream is. I’m never going to do it, so why do I bother? It’s like one of those dreams where you win the lottery. When you wake up broke, you just feel even worse than usual. I should just feel grateful to be right-side up on the highway, my heart still beating.

My heart slows and I slump back in the seat. The rain splatters the windshield in between the thumping sweeps of the wipers. My feeling of gratitude fades as quickly as it came.

Not a good day, I think.

I pull my roadside assistance card from my wallet. There’s no point in changing my own tire in this weather. I check my phone. No service. Great.

Outside, the rain is still coming down. I don’t have a raincoat or an umbrella, just my suit jacket. It’s better than nothing, so I throw it on, pop the trunk, and step out of the car into the rain.

The trunk, of course, is a jumbled mess of sample cases and crap, and by the time I get things shoved around enough to get at the spare tire, I know that the suit jacket actually isn’t better than nothing. It’s the same as nothing. I’m soaked right through.

When I finally discover that the spare is flat, I’m beyond frustrated. I scream into the gray, rainy sky, and slam the trunk lid. I climb back into the driver’s seat, sit in a puddle of water, and wonder, Why me?

Things didn’t start out this way. In the beginning, my job selling medical supplies was great. The pay was high. Training was a priority. There were lots of perks and elaborate company events. I felt this sense of upward mobility—of possibility.

For a while, the job was every salesperson’s dream: high margin, steady demand, and a product that helps people. What more could you want?

I found out pretty quickly when the company abruptly changed hands. It turns out there’s a lot to want. You can want a job where they don’t change your territory just when you’ve finally built some decent relationships. Where they don’t change the commission structure every time you feel like you’re starting to make a buck. Where your best customers don’t get clawed back and become corporate accounts as soon as your hard work starts to pay off.

Now, the whole thing feels like one big bait and switch. And yet I keep showing up every day. On the worst days, like today, I write my resignation letter in my head. But then I show up the next day like some sucker in a rigged carnival game.

Part of it is the carrot: They keep dangling an account executive title just out of my reach. That would mean more money and less time on the road, which would be great news for both me and my wife, Emma.

The other reason I keep showing up—the thing opposite the carrot—is the stick. I can’t leave. I need the money. I don’t have a fancy degree or fancy connections. I don’t have a fancy trust fund. What I do have is a fancy mortgage that we can barely afford. Leaving feels like financial suicide.

I can’t stay. I can’t leave. I chase the carrots, but they’re always dangled just out of reach. I fear the stick, which makes me feel trapped. I feel like I’m getting nowhere.

There’s a loud crack of thunder, and lightning brightens the gray afternoon. Despite it all, I laugh. Right now, I literally am getting nowhere. I check my phone again. No signal.

I’m about to get out and start walking when a car pulls up behind me, its headlights washing over me in the rain-darkened afternoon. I squint in the rearview mirror, but I can’t see anything in the glare.

The headlights turn off, and I realize it’s not a car, but a pickup truck. One that’s seen better days, from what I can tell. I’m about to hop out and save whoever it is the trouble of getting out into the rain, but they beat me to it.

I say they, because there’s no way to tell whether the person climbing out of the pickup truck is a man or a woman. They’re shrouded from the neck down in a bulky white suit, topped with a sort of floppy white helmet. For the briefest moment, I wonder if I’m about to be abducted by aliens. Sure, Noah. An alien in a beat-up old Ford.

Okay. So it’s not aliens. But what’s with the spacesuit? A darker thought strikes me: What if it’s a serial killer? The spacesuit looks like one of those white forensic outfits psychopaths use to keep from leaving evidence.

Suddenly, my crappy sales job doesn’t seem so crappy. Suddenly, I’d give anything to be back on the road and feeling grateful for my ever-shrinking commission check.

A white-gloved hand knocks on my window.

I push the button, lowering it a crack too small to let in rain or aliens or serial killers.

“Well hello,” says the warm, slightly raspy voice of an older man. “You look like a fella in need of a better day.”

A few moments later, I’m tucked into the warm cab of the old pickup truck, with most of my thoughts of aliens and serial killers left behind. The truck is at least three decades old, but it’s clean and seems to be idling smoothly.

“Thanks so much,” I say. “There’s no cell service here. My spare is flat. I guess I need a tow.”

The man pulls the strange white helmet off his head, and I see that it isn’t a helmet at all, but more of a floppy hat with mesh over the front. Underneath the getup is a man who looks to be in his late 60s. Fit, with a healthy but lined face. One that shows its years but carries them well.

“I had a spare like that once,” he says, setting down the hat. I think he’s joking, but I can’t really tell. Then he looks directly at me and I see the twinkle in his eyes.

“Tom Barnham,” he says, pulling off a white glove and extending a hand.

“Noah Mason,” I reply. “Thank you again. Is there a phone near here I could use?”

Tom shifts the truck into gear, and we pull away. “Yessir,” he says. “We’ll have to go to my place, though. Nearest cell tower is a ways off.”

I watch out the passenger window as we drive past my car, and I feel another pang of uncertainty.

“Don’t worry,” Tom says. “Your car will be fine here.” He tugs at the zipper that extends down the front of his white jumpsuit.

“What’s with the outfit?” I ask.

“It’s for the bees,” he says.

“The bees?”

“Was just on my way to pick up a hive when the storm came in,” he explains. “Otherwise you might be sharing this ride with a few thousand other hitchhikers.”

“You’re a beekeeper?”

Tom seems to ponder this. “After a fashion,” he says. “Although you might better say they keep me.”

I don’t quite get this, but before I can ask what he means, the old truck’s engine sputters an...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction: Two Disgruntled Guys
• 1: The Beekeeper
• 2: The Honey Trap
• 3: Reality Check
• 4: The Escape
• 5: The First Stream
• 6: The Sting
• 7: The Antidote
• 8: The Second Stream
• 9: The Busy Bee
• 10: The Third Stream
• 11: Bees of A Feather
• 12: The River
• 13: The Flood
• 14: The Beekeeper’s Last Lesson
• Afterword
• Streams of Giving Back
• Appendix A
• Appendix B
• About the Authors